Lots of you folks on the right have written to me to say that the appointment of a Democrat to be FBI director is out of the question. Do you really mean that? IMO we are a stage of potential dissolution of the Union that resembles 1859. To say that a Democrat could not and would not preside over an FBI investigation that would reveal the truth is an admission of the disappearance of the level of comity needed to hold the country together. I question your judgement about this. 1- Nothing has thus far been "leaked" that demonstrates ANY collusion between the Trump campaign and Russia or Russians. The Democrats are outraged because Lavrov and Putin laugh at the innuendo and agitprop in the media? Well, why would they not? There is no proof of any kind thus far. Even Senator Feinstein admits that. 2- The FBI is a large organization. Many in the Bureau and in DoJ will know what the investigation reveals. Do you really imagine that all those people would help conceal a result in the investigation that exonerates Trump?
Eleven state legislatures have voted for a new constitutional convention. Thirty four are required, twenty-three more. Amendments produced by such a convention would normally require approval by the US Congress and the state legislatures, but, IMO, there would be no way on earth to confine the outcome of such a convention to these requirements any more than there was in the instance of the first constitutional convention in the Eighteenth Century. In that instance the convention was called to make amendments to the Articles of Confederation, but the convention simply seized control of the process and created a wholly new form of government.
Is that what you want? If feelings continue to run in the direction they now take on the left and right you may well have your wishes fulfilled. pl
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Convention_to_propose_amendments_to_the_United_States_Constitution
Well said, Colonel Lang. I don’t think the current social divide and hardening of opinions into articles of faith can be attributed just to the widening gap between expectations and actual economic conditions among large swaths of Americans. I put a large part of the blame on the nature of our information society and the failure of an education system to properly teach history, civics, morals and manners. A proper education system wouldn’t make a society of angels. We’d still have plenty of no-good scoundrels, but it would ensure that most people would at least know what being a good citizen entails.
Honi soit qui mal y pense.
MRW
I am not a Garter Knight so your meaning is obscure to me. pl
As a matter of logic, it doesn’t seen possible to create a governing document which has the possibility of amendment, but somehow limits the scope of amendment (what stops an amendment from simply eliminating article V).
I don’t see why the mode of proposing amendment (via Congress or states convention) has any difference on the scope of amendments, nor do I see why the “hair pulling” over what a states convention might propose is warranted. Either way it must go through ratification of 3/4s of the states’ legislatures.
During the nullification crisis (and contrary to the “proof” of Trump’s idiocy I find the question of the counter-factual of Jackson being around at the time of Kansas-Nebraska interesting) Jackson dispatched his VP Martin Van Buren to the NY state legislature to ghostwrite a resolution on the doctrine of nullification. Van Buren’s resolution (as Jackson requested) denied the validity of nullification, but then went further into the core political issue of the relation of the states to the “general government” (as the Feds were called in those days). Van Buren’s argument was that all three branches of the federal government had a vested interest in increasing the power of the federal government relative to the states, and the concept of “separation of powers” was no brake on federal power (which is why Amendment X is just so much pablum). Van Buren (correctly in my view) foresaw that the natural tension in state vs federal powers would tend to result in either one side or the other becoming dominant. The only check of federal dominance in Van Buren’s view was the power of the states convention. This he saw as the proper remedy, not nullification. Where I think Van Buren erred, is that he seemed to assume the states would be very jealous of their power and would act collectively to protect it. The reality seems to be that states (at least a significant number) are perfectly happy to being reduced to little more than administrative elements of the federal government.
As an aside, the “sanctuary” movement seems to me exactly designed to mimic the “personal liberty” laws enacted at the north in the 1850s to prevent state assistance in administering the Fugitive Slave Act. All the questions of state vs federal power seem to have been asked in connection with those earlier laws.
The Plutocrats and their lobbies are pushing hard for a new convention. They want to restrict the franchise, do away with the republic and enshrine Citizens United divine rights (Blankfein: I’m doing gods work) in a new constitution. With the new robotics, atomically precise manufacturing and AI coming down the pipeline, plutocrats have little to no use for 80% of the population. With all the new cognitive weaponry at their disposal, I think they can succeed.
Sir
You are absolutely correct. A constitutional convention could go anyway and could move far away from our current constitutional republic. I believe the GOP are one state away from having the 34 states required. Imagine McCain and his office wife all over that convention!!
The Democrats keep whining about why their anointed Borg Queen lost the election to the “buffoon” Trump. They don’t get why even the “buffoon” defeated their sure thing. They keep losing state houses and legislatures. Losing states even under their “messiah”. Instead of reflecting on why the voters are repudiating them, they stay in their bubble and blame everyone else. This Russia hysteria looks very similar to the old McCarthy witchhunts.
DC is completely dysfunctional while ensconced in their groupthink. The country in the meantime is breaking apart in the rigidity of people’s views. Everyone now self selects and reinforce their biases and only look at issues, news and opinions that they are predisposed to. We are getting close to the environment during Nixon’s first term. I recall the race riots across the country, the battle with the radicals during the Democratic convention and the media hysteria. This time it could be the Deplorables agitating against the political, media and corporate establishment backed by the coastal/urban crowd who have enjoyed the benefits of the rising income inequality. The next civil war will not be a War Between States but a War Within Every State!
Sir,
Basically what the left is driving towards is Sodom and Gomorrah with Karl Marx as El Presidente. They also wish to destroy the Constitution and replace it with something that comes out of a social sciences think tank. That’s just for starters.
There is no working with these people. Every compromise is part of the slow slide towards the destruction of the country as we know it and closer to an end resembling what Venezuela is experiencing.
Make Yates a special investigator/prosecutor for the Russian thing and get rid of her when she’s done. The Dems have been calling for a independent investigator. That should make them extra happy. If she is made FBI director for the sole purpose of handling the investigation, Trump – and America – will end up paying for it for years to come as she obstructs executive directives.
IMO, civil war or a dissolving of the union is inevitable. The education system k- 12 and up through the universities and colleges has been taken over by adherents of a cancerous ideology and their product is infected at rates that do not bode well for the future. There are separate indoctrination programs for the feral savages that don’t complete k-12 (e.g. denizens of S. Chicago, Compton, Detroit, Baltimore, Ferguson). These are all zombie warriors for certain elites. I’d rather fight them than join them or become their captives.
Honi soit qui mal y pense is an Anglo-Norman maxim that means, “May he be shamed who thinks badly of it”. Its literal translation from Old French is, “Shame be to him who thinks evil of it.” It is sometimes re-interpreted as “Evil (or shame) be to him that evil thinks.”
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Honi_soit_qui_mal_y_pense
TTG,
the education system is wholly controlled by the left. What you are seeing is the result of the leftist cancer infecting our society. How can such people be reasoned with? How can one work with them? Why would one wish to please them?
The information system is also largely leftist controlled.
Well I am not seeing it as so clear cut, and those who talk about “left” on SST seem to imply anyone who is not GOP.
Meanwhile, among middle aged and younger I am seeing huge consensus on multiple policy issues between alt right, libertarians, independents, and alt left/greens/sandernistas with the anti corruption theme and fidelity to constitution (especially privacy in the face of the unaccountable, expensive, survelliance state), net neutrality, and non interference foreign affairs policy having highest agreement and priority, and open willingness to coalition on these issues.
In other words, Sandernista/Green/alt left/independents are also united in a no confidence vote in Democrat Party top tier and Obama/Clinton crony-land. Insofar as Trump is unable to differentiate himself from the Obama-Clinton political cultural nexus (Soros-Kuchner partnerships etc), his flanks are exposed and vulnerable.
That is Main St consensus. Main St doesnt care which party stripe is in DC appointments, if only they would be ethical and anti corruption, imo. I.e., Larry Wilkerson is loved by left for standing on principle, even though he is GOP as he openly discloses. Someone of that caliber is whqt is wanted. Not the usual Wall St Hollywood fluff-n-nutter money laundering agents masquerading as public servants lol.
Meaning those who ponder secession are evil ? If so I could not agree more.
Here’s an example of pervasive lack of confidence in either legacy party c/o alt (true) left Black Agenda Report’s chief editor Glen Ford:
https://blackagendareport.com/jail_obama_and_trump_for_war_crimes
trinlae
“I am not seeing it as so clear cut, and those who talk about “left” on SST seem to imply anyone who is not GOP.” You are not seeing what as not so clear cut? I am not s member of the GOP and the vision of “the left” in American society seems clear to me. Are you on “the left?” pl
Colonel, with due respect, this country is not going to fall apart on the count of this one guy nobody liked. You have said it before, he served with the trust and at pleasure of the presisdent, he lost that trust, the way he was acting, he deserved and had it coming.
fourthandlong
Do you see the present constitution as divinely ordained rather than a politically negotiated document? If you do not see it as divine, something like the Quran, then why would those who do not see it as necessarily perpetual be “evil?” pl
kooshy
You don’t get it. This has nothing to do with Comey and everything to do with the seemingly ever increasing alienation among discreet groups of Americans. Maybe you can’t see that from Palos Verdes or wherever it is. pl
John Franck
Ah, merci, je n’avais pas compris que vous connaissiez la langue Anglo-Normande si bien. pl
Excuse me Colonel, I glitched. My halfzheimers I guess. I mentally went from “dissolution” to “secession” in part by way of contemplation of 1859. No I don’t see the constitution as divinely ordained, not consciously at least. Though the arguments over constitutionality and unconstitutionality over the years often appear to have a religious fervor to them and I’ve likely revealed unconscious reverence of such nature or quality.Wouldn’t surprise me. I suppose secession is not necessarily “evil” either, though that is not what was up for discussion.
Mental lapse.
Is that what I want? Absolutely, for it would finally mean the end of the American war machine. The world would be much better of for it.
Up in Canada we have been battling reopening the constitution for decades as Quebec has had a shopping list that they wanted changed and kept threatening to leave if they didn’t get what they wanted. But once you open that a crack every province suddenly has a shopping list of things they want and constitutional change becomes impossible.
That is with 10 provinces and 3 territories (who would all demand to be made provinces if the constitution was opened) the US with 52 states and how many territories would be far uglier. The up side for the US is that it has an amending formula for simple (relative) things. This is a fist fight you really don’t want, especially since I highly suspect what the politicians want (Israel as 53 for example) and what the people want would be very, very different things.
bravenewworld
The US Constitution was created by the states. Canadian provinces did not create the Canadian Confederation. The Westminster Parliament did that. If enough states vote for a convention this would be a convention. pl
Our Constitution is being changed every year by unelected leftist Supreme Court judges. Would a Constitutional Convention be any worse? At least there would be the chance for conservatives to bring to bear the power of the (perhaps illusory)
silent majority. I’d choose that way rather than death by a thousand cuts.
Colonel,
You are absolutely right to highlight this issue at what is, each day, more evidently a critical time for America.
The Comey-replacement situation is just symptomatic of the greater malaise in the US political system. Those who cannot see where this leads, if attitudes harden and all consensus ultimately evaporates simply lack imagination, IMHO. The Union is not guaranteed by the laws of nature or by a divine higher authority. It is only maintained by the common consent of the people and the efforts of their elected representatives – regardless of whether their party currently holds power.
Who needs a conspiracy from a foreign state when our own politicians seem well able to engineer a collapse from within.
Karl Kolchak
Are you an American? If not, this is none of your business. pl
Dissolution of the Union is inevitable. The 1965 immigration act and the chain-immigration that it subsequently triggered has compromised the national integrity of the United States. This was bound to happen. You can’t change the demographics of a nation without fracturing it.
The sad part of this story is that due to the decades long censorship in US media, Americans are the last people on earth to learn about this.
Hopefully future historians can analyze what happened to us and learn from our mistakes.
“There are separate indoctrination programs for the feral savages that don’t complete k-12 (e.g. denizens of S. Chicago, Compton, Detroit, Baltimore, Ferguson). These are all zombie warriors for certain elites. I’d rather fight them than join them or become their captives.”
Comity huh? Good luck with that.
War is a constant in human history, and the fall of the US Empire will increase the occurrence of conflicts, not diminish them. Consider the demise of the Holy Roman Empire in Europe.
Leftists who hate their own country and idealize the brown and black ‘other’ (to assuage their guilt complex) are completely incapable of realizing this abiding truth: victims have no superior moral compass.
Chomsky types think that once the ‘military industrial complex’ or ‘capitalist exploitation’ are dealt with, they’ll finally be able to get on with what’s really important in life – living out their lives as ‘last men’, with a pervasive welfare state facilitating the equal abasement all humanity.
Well, those people are in for a fright. Because post-modernity selects for those who reject it.
Rousseau talked about the necessity of discrete and integral custom in order to form a society where the law is viewed as binding and sovereign; an embodiment of the ‘general will’.
Under the aegis of post-industrial capitalism, the rubric of the ‘proposition nation’, the intensification of mass society, the hatreds engendered by multiculturalism, and the infiltration of the American elite by elements hostile to the traditional West; the ground on which unity is a possibility has been washed away.
The very fact the various factions have started to view appointments outside their party as an existential threat is a signal only raw managerial power keeps the Republic together. Washington is no longer a Federal capital, its an imperial city state arbitrating between several ‘nations’ whose loyalty to Washington emerges from hating and fearing it slightly less than they do each other.
I am an American citizen, but I can see why non-americans want to see the endof the American war machine.
I’d rather see a constitutional convention than a civil war.
Augustin L,
I disagree. I think they want a more compliant demographic and are obtaining one via immigration. The new and improved Americans as replacement for the stubborn individualistic ones America has now.
Col.
I say no. Sadly the days where I am able to influence those who still think voting and participation in civic life matters are getting shorter.
Appointing an FBI Director from the Left will not stop this madness. Sorry but we are one justice away from SCOTUS discovering 2A rights mean “the National Guard” and a confiscation act is hunny dory, to say nothing of them deciding the 1A doesn’t cover “hate speech”, which is whatever they want it to mean whenever they want it to mean it.
I thought the election of Trump would pull the Left back from the edge and make them self reflect, but they have driven themselves mad with apocalyptic dogma in a way doomsday cultists would be uncomfortable with.
Col, Think you’re right, a Constitutional Convention would tear up the pea patch we’ve spent over two hundred years tending and refining through amendments, legislation and case law. No telling what would come out of it.
Seems with the profound polarization we have now the problem will be to find a competent FBI director who is not crazy either left or right. Partisan, fine, but rabid partisan, meaning hysterical Dem or dingbat Repub will only make things worse. Also, the FBI is a big enough institution it needs a Director with line officer experience.
Yates showed courage and integrity when she refused to defend the Muslim ban, and she was quick enough on her feet to hand Cruz his head recently. I don’t know enough about her to know where she stands politically or if she has any large organization management experience.
We are living in interesting times as the old Chinese curse goes. I fear for my grand children and the world they are growing into.
Colonel,
Off topic:
Here’s a tidbit I thought you’d find interesting in reading. Prior to the May 9 Victory Day parade in Moscow, Putin paid a visit to his old KGB mentor when Putin worked in Dresden, Putin’s old mentor lives in Moscow and had just turned 90.
https://rusreality.com/2017/05/08/putin-visited-his-former-leader-working-in-dresden-2/
Colonel Lang,
I quite agree, I think the Union is in real peril. People who see the Union as somehow “natural” or fore-ordained seem to neglect their history to me. Not just the facts of it, but even more so its astonishing and ironic ebbs, flows, twists, turns. The maintenance of the Union for as long as it has thus far held together has been a “near run thing” indeed. Nothing guarantees that a continental-scale federal union of widely differing regional cultures and societies holds together permanently.
I also agree with what Jack said above, and what you have stated before: a fight within states (which yes, certainly occurred in the 1860s and the 1770s) will be even more extreme if we come to active internal violence, insurrection, or war today. You don’t have to go far from the glitziest parts of downtown Boston or lower Manhattan to find people who passionately hate those places — in my view, often with great cause, for their essentially colonial relationship with the rest of us — such that the countryside in places like southeastern Massachusetts, New Hampshire, the Hudson Valley/Catskills will be solidly aligned against the city centers. Indeed, I think you can imagine a situation where people in outer neighborhoods of the cities themselves (parts of Queens & Brooklyn & Jersey, Dorchester and Revere, etc) align with rural regions against the overwhelmingly ritzy-urban ruling class (no South or West Side or Roxbury for them!). You could easily foresee a dynamic like 1789, or 1917. It seems to me people are really playing with fire here.
That said, in my little corner of New England, we have local institutions that are imperfect but democratic, and I have great confidence in the small communities of this continent to govern themselves well. The divorce between the kabuki and the navel-gazing in the wealthy neighborhoods of DC, NYC, San Francisco, and all the other shiny metropoles, and the reality of life in 90% of contemporary America, is vast; and if the rulers, in both parties, don’t start to do something to close that gap, I think we are headed for heavy weather.
so you think Citizens United was decided “by unelected leftist Supreme Court judges”?
the most influential decision of this century
and i don’t think any “leftists” joined the majority opinion
I just finished watching Lawrence of Arabia, wonderful film. Seems we need a Lawrence of America to bring the warring tribes together.
Maybe more right leaning should become teachers instead of complaining there are too many left leaning teachers. I get it, teachers don’t make enough money. Why be a teacher when you can be in the insurance business and make the big bucks.
Thank You Sir, actualy closer to the Palisades , colonel Lang, the day after he fired him, he invited the Russian FM, it was a show of finger to McCain, and the rest of Russia freaks.
Deep State/CIA specializes in disinformation, anarchy, and color revolutions. Don’t understand why such might be applied against American government, but the tools are in place and proven.
When the Comey decision was announced over the radio, I actually dented the center console in my truck in a fit of ecstasy. Lucky I missed my leg. Somebody did something. In Washington.
If for no other reason than to stop the meaningless trickling of spiteful rhetoric from the Hill, (being charitable here), I would like to see the FBI put in a state of receivership under a cadre of appointees and blow the lid off of the Russia meddling story as well as the DNC vs. Russia imbroglio.
Sadly, though, just as with the Warren Commission and the 911 Commission, I would not expect to be near satisfied with the reports. Let it be sufficient to channel the sludge into a process that establishes a broad consensus of finality and move on.
The sooner Trump realizes that his sword is made of rubber the better. Firing Comey may have been within the purview of his power, but whatever is in those FBI files, if anything, is sure to be well-guarded by the gumshoes.
Twisted — Well said. We need to stand together…either by birth or by choice…”to protect and defend the Constitution.” I have no confidence in a new convention…the level of discourse is too low and the backers are not interested in the national interest.
You are welcome.
Eric — When was the last time you stepped into a comprehensive public high school? There is no way that US education is “controlled by the left.” In fact, on one issue — the teaching of civics — it is a more rightward push that has created this last couple of generations of dunces. At least in California, government is only taught for one semester so that the other semester can be freed up to teach economics! I think we can all agree that there is enough to learn about American government and practice to fill an entire year of classroom work…and that teaching economics could easily be done through American history with an emphasis on economic history. Love of money (or love of the study thereof) IS the root of all evil!
Eric,
Many (including myself) would consider me “on the left” and I recognize nothing of my beliefs or desires in what you describe. I hope that stuff about Marx and destroying the Constitution was hyperbole. Also, you mention Baltimore, but I fear you see it only in the abstract. As a long time resident of Baltimore, I am a daily witness to the results of “American Carnage”, often quite literally in my own backyard. The utter neglect this city and its people have suffered under the political elite, both locally and nationally, is a crime. But it is not an attempt to raise a zombie army. It is simply humans failing to govern well because they are all too human. I suspect that is a problem in many places. Also, I can attest that, wherever you are, you are safe from the angry poor of this city. When they riot, they loot and burn their own neighborhoods.
In 1981 Pierre Trudeau repatriated the constitution. It’s all Canada’s now. England doesn’t run the show any longer.
But back to the idea of the USA breaking apart. Didn’t a Russian geopolitical expert of some sort actually predict this a couple of decades ago? What a mess that would be.
Not seeing it–THAT revolution doesn’t start until 2023-2030. Current one only uses AI peripherally but rather is being fought in the weaponized P.R. and media agencies. Also in currency–India profoundly worrisome test case. But still looks like old-fashioned Ziocon/GoldmanSachs/Ergodan style power-grab revolution. Outcome of this one will determine how totalitarian (universal East-Germany-style surveillance, anyone? “Administrative detention?”) America becomes, which in turn will set the board for the next revolution. Doesn’t get really crazy until the Terminators come for the 3rd wave, Empire Strikes Back, around 2032. I’m buying farmland.
I think Trinlae is trying to point out, perhaps a bit clumsily, that some of the comments above defining leftist ideology as “cancerous” share some degree of blame for the toxic political environment as much as leftist whining about naughty words, misogyny, or fill in the blank. One half of the population demonizing or invalidating the beliefs–or at least that appearing to be the case–of the other half does not a healthy polity make.
While I definitely agree with your comment below about alienation and partition (in the group sense), I’m curious how you define discreet, alienated groups? Do you mean political groups with a specific hobby horse or set of them? Or more long ethnic lines? Religious? Geographic? Socio-economic? All of the above? (Apologies if I’m getting too social science-y)
I think it speaks somewhat to Trinlae’s point: there are a number of these individuals/groups sort of brewing in the ether who can fundamentally agree on a core set of political beliefs but are fractured and less willing to affiliate with one political party or another for a variety of reasons.
Down in Front
I meant the original creation of Canadia. pl
If God wanted us to be libertarians, He would have made us reproduce asexually.
When the Petro-dollar ponzi scheme finally collapses (a certainty) along with Social Security and the majority of pensions schemes across the US an entire sequence of events will unfold that will include the collapse of the Federal Government as its employees can no longer be paid with money that anyone trusts. The IRS will be unable to keep real money flowing into the treasury.
State governments will be forced to fend for themselves, and this is why Texas, Utah and other states are declaring gold legal tender and trying to get control of their own supplies of real money.
The US, once a white Christian country, has completely fragmented and there is no longer cross group solidarity, or even much social capital within groups. So the majority of states will also split apart as they can no longer pay their employees and they split along economic and cultural rifts.
It will be self-segregation and civil war. This time for real.
Whether a Democrat or Republican is head at the FBI is just window dressing. This collapse is already long baked in the cake.
Eric,
There are too much hatre for “the others” in your post. I got the gist of your point of view, which is not unreasonable. But unfortunately it is nonsensical with so much hatre in the last two sentences.
It seems to me that the fastest and surest way to a Civil War would be to hold a Constitutional Convention.
What I see the Col saying here, we need a grand gesture. Somebody to extend their hand, in good faith, to the ‘other side’. Now is the chance. There ARE Dems, maybe not from the ‘hard left’, but there are Dems out there who could do the job.
The gesture is worth the risk.
pl
As you know I am not American but I spend more time watching American politics than British as, of the two, yours has more impact on my world than ours. Sadly what happens in the US does not stay in the US it impacts the whole world as the US is not like the EU, Russia, China et al in that it seems determined to export its views on a wide range of topics and punish those that do not follow them.
I await your ‘I am Anti-American’ response but I would be anti-Anywhere if Anywhere wanted to impose sanctions on ships that went to, or States that traded with, Countries that Anywhere happened not to like while other, equally despicable (or worse), countries got aid and arms shipments. And then there are the bogus foreign wars and attempts at regime change. As a Brit I am even more ‘Anti-British’ as we are guilty of actively aiding and abetting your Government in all these crimes as its loyal lap dog. I see no exit for either of our countries as we have both perverted our implementations of ‘Democracy’ to a point that the voters feel their vote is only for show and the wishes of contributors to party platforms are the only ones with any kind of influence.
I would be happy as a citizen of the Commonwealth of New England. That could be a nice decent little country if based on the town meeting, subsidiarity principle.
Trade, high tech from MIT/Harvard et al research, back to manufacturing and farming, too.
We wouldn’t bother anyone like JQ Adams advised. Keep a small military staff and training establishment, a real Swiss-style militia, the Coast Guard vessels, and two SSBNs from Groton to prevent anyone from bothering us.
1664RM
Find another soap box. pl
We can produce asexually in a sense, it is called in vitro.
jayinbmore,
Sure. I hear that all the time (“I’m on the left, but what you say doesn’t describe me”). Well, it sure as heck describes your comrades. Go ahead, Deny it. There are innumerable examples available at the finger tips, at the university campus and on capitol hill.
You probably believe in a little victim restitution here, a little modernization of the constitution there, a little “leveling of the playing field” for this matter, a little more fairness in that matter…..it’s quite reasonable to you, but the problem is, the left never stops. Give an inch and they take a mile. Once you got all those little adjustments that you want, you’d see that things still weren’t fair and just and you’d chip away at the margins further. Ultimately, you end up at the same place as your radical comrades, who you most definitely aid and abet.
And Baltimore, Detroit, etc are definitely a product of leftist ideology. How can you have a successful city when you tell the residents that they are victims of a racist system and that they are owed by the racist and there is little point in trying because racists will never accept them. So sit on the porch, drink your 40, smoke a little crack, pop out fatherless babies and get yourself paid by the man.
The U.S. was never a white only country. How convenient to have forgotten about the native Americans, Asians, African Americans. You probably believe the U.S. was only a white male country.
The 1965 immigration act and the chain-immigration that it subsequently
It feels I stumbled across this in various publications, statements, comments, that dug into the highly sinister intention and occasionally into special interests behind this act.
Could you let me know, why it is or could be the ultimate reason for a high chance–present or in the near future– for the “Dissolution of the Union”?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Immigration_and_Nationality_Act_of_1965
Explain, would you please, Tyler.
The Democrats or the left, or whoever, the “Clintocrites and Obamacrats” maybe(?), were in the process of taking over and erecting a police state in which the soldiers for truth and virtue like you would be arrested their possessions confiscated while they are locked up. To put it starkly, if I may?
Nancy K
He can answer for himself but IMO the US was a predominately white country just as Israel is a predominately Jewish country. pl
Fred – “… a more compliant demographic and are obtaining one via immigration.”
That is the end result of the process. Something like the later Ottoman empire, though that was arrived at differently. A multiplicity of disparate groups, too busy looking after their own enclave to make common cause against the central authority. And if one group or set of groups did find a common cause you went in and hammered them.
You could find a parallel in that last respect with the flyover whites, or with the derelict industrial areas. There’s a sense of masses of communities there groping their way towards a common cause, and one so disruptive of the status quo that they’re coming up due for a hammering.
Which explains the frenetic response after the Clinton defeat. That wasn’t just Team Clinton losing. The universal sense of crisis among the bien pensants, the universal fear of threat to the status quo, was palpable. As is the sense that this threat must be defanged somehow or else somehow repressed. It’ll be so much easier when further mass immigration further fragments the population. Then the various enclaves can fight it out among themselves at the ballot box and none powerful enough to disrupt the status quo. If the conflict stays at the relatively pacific level of the ballot box, that is.
All that is implicit in your analysis of a more compliant population being achieved by mass immigration. But I stick at your “They want”. That implies the existence of a “They”. An identifiable group within the overclass, with its supporting retinue, deliberately bringing about the circumstances that will ensure its own predominance.
I’m not sure there’s any such “They”. No Soros & Co., or whatever group one cares to identify, artfully steering towards a pre-determined conclusion. There may even be groups within the overclass thinking they’re doing that, but if so they’re deluding themselves and we are deluding ourselves thinking the same. It’s more a random mess heading towards a condition that is an inevitable result of various pressures. A bit of Zeitgeist here, a bit of self-interest there, good intentions but good intentions in an unworkable framework, a whole lot of bits and pieces of causes that all working randomly together will bring us in the West further down the road to ultimate disintegration.
Disintegration, that is, of anything resembling government by the people for the people. Of any sense of a community working out its own future together. More a dystopian world where a sullen population, divided among itself and thus powerless, remains at the mercy of a victorious overclass.
Except that communities, like individuals, do have Free Will. We are not merely mechanisms subject to some inevitable mechanical process. It is possible for us jointly as well as individually to identify those random process that affect us and to modify them. That is true politics. In the free-wheeling and anarchic world that is the American political scene I thought I saw, in 2016, that true politics in embryo. I believe I did see that, and that that fresh growth has not been killed off or suppressed. It is only the nurturing of that true politics that will lead us away from the dystopian world we are otherwise inevitably heading for.
Or, less wordily, keep banging away, Fred. The rest of us will get it, sooner or later.
I would too. It’s funny that, independent of one another, we’ve both settled on very similar details — Town Meetings, the “go not in search of monsters” principle, citizen-army Swiss (or Swedish or Finnish?) style, and a maritime force that, while mostly devoted to fishing and navigational safety, has the capacity out of Groton for a “continuous at sea deterrent” as the Brits say, just in case….
A decade back, at a boring office job, I remember adding up the GDPs of each New England state* while thinking along these lines, and coming up with a total that put us somewhere between Australia and The Netherlands in world terms. Not bad!
I would also advocate moving the capital somewhere else than Boston to avoid the Paris/London effect.
Obviously, I hope it doesn’t come to this. But if it does — I was reading a history of the last century of the Hapsburg Empire, and the similarities are several** — it’s likely we’ll break down on the basis of our extant sectional/regional units. I don’t begrudge our sister commonwealths like Virginia or Kentucky or Pennsylvania, or any state or region, for wanting to go their own way if it comes to it, either.
* yes, I know that this includes elements of federal interstate trade, etc.; it was a thought-experiment.
** A highly bureaucratic state devoted to keeping apart an interminably mixed and squabbling multi-ethnic population while serving primarily as an engine for a foreign policy and Great Power pretensions, e.g. Of course, there are major differences, as well.
Laura,
So Schwarzenegger screwed up California’s educational system and Governor Brown hasn’t fixed it in all his years in office? If only Democrats controlled the California legislature.
Kathy,
God inspired all those Christian white men to draft the US Constitution. But if you want to ask God why the 2016 woman of the year hasn’t gotten pregnant yet feel free to do so. Maybe he’ll give you a non-settled science biology lesson.
jayinbmore,
If only the folks in town could elect people to city government. Someone should register them to vote. Too bad DeRay Mckesson sold out for a government job, he’d be good at that.
GZC,
The current Republic would be a nicer place if still based on those principles.
Nancy,
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographic_history_of_the_United_States#Population_in_1790
It wasn’t a third Hispanic in 1776. Nor were Asians even a single percentage point.
Eric,
Your assumptions about my politics are still incorrect, but offering more detail here would take more time or space than any reader here would have the patience for (including me). To your last point though: I can’t speak to conditions in Detroit (I was born there but haven’t been back in over 30 years). However, your notions of what is wrong in Baltimore are fiction. The junky I chased out of my yard two days ago, the pimp and his whores who operste two blocks from my house, and the gang of pushers who roam our main thoroughfare are all white. The pimp and several of the pushers are on public assistance, but I don’t think it’s because they have been taught they are victims of a racist system.
Colonel;
Your remark about how the Constitution was created interests me.
I know that it was, by the original 13, but how clear is it, IYO, that the other 37 had any real choice other than to sign on as a condition of being admitted as states?
I don’t advocate the dissolution of the Union, but it doesn’t seem to me that it might not happen. If history shows us anything, it shows us that the existence of nation states and empires is evanescent in the long term. There have nearly always been significant centrifugal forces at work in the USA and I can envision those tearing apart the Union at some point; the trigger could be significant economic dislocation resulting in different views,regionally, on the cost/benefit equation on remaining attached.
This of course is all speculative. I have been reading “The Black Swan” and maybe that leads me in that direction.
Discussing the mere possibility seems to provoke strong emotions in people; I have had friends just get mad at me for talking about it as a thought experiment, while the same friends are quite at ease talking about life on earth being wiped out by an asteroid strike.
That sounds good to me 🙂
Pat re “Do you see the present constitution as divinely ordained rather than a politically negotiated document? If you do not see it as divine.”
Why not just say “The US Constitution, Quran, Bible, Talmud (et al) are politically negotiated documents?”
The Constitution, on a good day, had an ‘as is’ half life of maybe 10-15 years. It’s been tire patched on the side of the road from the start.
Is there a “best time” to rewrite the US Constitution or are tire patches all we get/deserve?
A. Pols
You haveanswered your own question. It was a pre-condition for admission to the Union. The clearest case was in the case of Utah in which Mormon semi-theorcracy had to be abandoned including IMO polygamy. pl
HCG
If you want to re-negotiate the terms large and small of the US Constitution, then have at it. Just understand that you might end up living in the People’s Republic of Ecotopia up there in the NW. I took an oath to protect and defend the US Constitution. That oath was legal, not sacramental precisely because the US Constitution is not a divinely ordained document. pl
Colonel,
Nobody who loves their country/union wants to see it dissolved, assuming that it still is in its essence the country/union that it is in their hearts and minds. The question in my mind is, what is the USA? I know what we’re told that it is, in the classical sense, which was the union as our founding fathers envisioned it, with a representative balanced governing body that has checks to limit power, with the people deciding who rules them and being represented by those elected. Is that what it is now?
In a recent thread (http://turcopolier.typepad.com/sic_semper_tyrannis/2017/05/httpswwwclausewitzcommobileprinciplesofwarhtm.html), you posted the following:
“This seems to be acceptable to the Israeli/R2P satellite state called the US a satellite which was once a proud country. A country for which my ancestors literally fought since the 17th Century.”
I think you hit the nail on the head with this statement. It seems that all of the political maneuvering both inside and outside of the USA by those elected (or non-elected) officials is largely controlled by the most powerful, and these are globalists, i.e. not Americans. The destruction of the USA as good-old Americans see it seems to be the goal of the globalists. The color revolution being waged inside the USA with the SJWs, antifa’s, etc is a difference in degree only from that waged by ISIS elsewhere. Seeing that the mass media only adds fuel to the fire by generally supporting/advocating for these subversive types and NEVER supporting the side of the traditional Americans lends credence to this being a color revolution rather than just a butting of heads of people with different opinions. The mass media, as always, is just hauling water for TPTB, the money changers, neocons, as you will. Is dissolution what THEY want???
Is dissolution of traditional Europe what THEY want as well? Europe looks to be in an advancing state of dissolution. Is the USA any different? All of the West is largely controlled by the money changers. George Carlin’s “AMERICAN DREAM” (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=acLW1vFO-2Q) bit sums our situation up as well as anything I’ve seen. A dissolution of any society where this is the most accurate thing that can be said about it seems inevitable.
Is it possible that the money changers want global domination, and that a healthy USA and Europe would be the greatest impediment to that goal, in their opinion?
By deception they rule. By deception they wage war. Our politicians are deceptor marionettes only. If votes are tallied and a new constitutional convention is staged, it will not be because the Americans wanted it (not including the young dreamers who don’t know any better, or those Americans who don’t know shit beyond the Disneyesque portrayals shown to them and parrot those portrayals – but then that just goes back to TPTB).
Jay,
You’re missing the point and your miss and response in general is typical, once again.
The white criminals and junkies haven’t formed a political block, aren’t seeking payment/payback from the dominant culture that created the country and infrastructure and they aren’t trying to un-do what was created for political reasons. They don’t hate the country and find it morally corrupt and founded on evil. Rather, they’re just criminals. The people I describe are indeed aligned in seeking to destroy the country for political reasons.
TonyL,
I know how this game of yours is played. Anyone who strongly disagrees with you is a “hater” and “bigot”, etc. That is supposed to shame the person who disagrees. Sorry, but I proudly deplorable.
I disagree.
In my opinion, the agenda for various divisive issues and social problems in the United State are set by those whose parents were already present in the United States prior to 1965.
In what manner, I would ask, the evisceration of trust between Euro-Americans and African Americans could be traced to the Immigration Act of 1965?
How did the immigrants from the Orient or from South of Rio Grande contribute to the Iraq War of 2003 or Financial Crisis of 2008, or the War between Men and Women in USA?
Did the immigrants post 1965 brought with them the Drug Culture and the attendant Gun Violence?
I do not think so.
That is just a canard; pre-1965 populations are indulging in a very dangerous past time; I guess they think it is as harmless as baseball.
No Democrat FBI Director? I would add perhaps 98% of all sitting Republicans to the 99% of Democrats.
Worship of the constitution is what some Baby Boomers have instead of actual religion. The rest worship some gauzy notion of social justice they swallowed decades ago. They’ve failed in every measure by which an age cohort can be measured.
It’s hard to see that you’ve based your life on a lie. It’s harder still to admit it.
We have decayed into a constitutional oligarchy. The social contract, long weakening, was shattered in 2008-2009 when the perpetrators of The Great Fraud were not only not prosecuted, but bailed out.
Claiming that all of this doesn’t represent “true capitalism” is about as convincing as claiming that the Gulag doesn’t represent “true socialism.”
This is not Democrats versus Republicans. It’s not Left versus Right. It’s not socialists versus capitalists.
This is about power. This is about who rules.
Always has been. Always will be.
Understand: This is a death match between nationalists and globalists.
If the latter wins, the West as we know it is finished and in half a century the United States will become indistinguishable from Brazil.
Think about that.
Now none of you can say you weren’t told.
Excellent analysis by best writer in USA.
Too much to restate or quote.
Trump v. Comey
David Bromwich 11 May 2017
https://www.lrb.co.uk/blog/2017/05/11/david-bromwich/trump-v-comey/
“… and contrary to the ‘proof’ of Trump’s idiocy I find the question of the counter-factual of Jackson being around at the time of Kansas-Nebraska interesting …”
In which case you’ll probably really enjoy this article by Steve Sailer: http://www.unz.com/isteve/andrew-jackson-anti-states-rights-nationalist/
Ecotopia…hmm. Pat, I took/repeated the same oath as you. Protect, as I remember, was not part of the US/drafted person’s oath. But I could be wrong. Like it or not, I guess we have a difference of opinion?, there will be a point in time short of “barricade time” when the Constitution will require a revisit. Today is not that day. Punt.
Some people live the stereotype, there is no doubt.Others do not. But your hate is palpable and that emotion won’t help you in any way. People will sense it and shun you. Suppose the big day comes when you can take your stockpiled guns and ammo and go do what you seem to want the most, kill your fellow Americans. But because of your hate and the other things that sprout from it(contempt,etc) you will violate one of the most important rules of war. Because your blinding hate caused you to see the opposition incorrectly, you will violate the tenant that states,”know your enemy”. Thus you will end up as roadkill. Some of the most stone cold killers I knew back in the day were quite liberal. You will meet one of them and that will be it for you.
If I join an armed insurrection it will not be over some stupid Liberal/Conservative right/left construct. It will be as in the oath I swore to defend the constitution against enemies of the foreign/domestic variety. I never renounced that oath.
If you think what passes for the Democratic party leadership is liberal you are completely out of touch.
ex 11B
https://en.wikipedia.org wiki/Convention_to_propose_amendments_to_the_United_States_Constitution
You need to read the constitution my friend. A general convention and indidual amendments are the constitutional ways to change the constitution. BTW you may feel bound in your heart by your enlistment oath but you are not legally bound by it. That is why US officers were able to resign from the US Army in 1861. After their resignations were accepted they were no longer bound by that oath. None were ever tried after the war for desertion treason or anything else. pl
HCG
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Armed_Forces_oath_of_enlistment You want to quibble over the word “protect?” The oaath for an officer is slightly different. All enlisted people take the same oath. There was no difference between draftees and RA solders. pl
Seamus Padraig
A. Jackson was as described by the author of the piece. IMO if Jackson had been alive and president 1855-60 he would have prevented secession by fair means or foul. The idea that speculating on that is “counter-factual” is just moronic. pl
“Comity huh? Good luck with that. ”
Yep. We all need good luck for that. Hatred — as an instinct — is as hard wired into humans as are the instincts for love, feeding and so many others. Wouldn’t be here otherwise. Conflict is inevitable, and settled sooner or later by violent contest as anyone can see.
Challenge for everyone. Some don’t see it as a challenge to overcome but an invitation to battle in service of their needs and desires.
In 1931 Albert Einstein wrote a public letter to Sigmund Freud to ask him, revered and controversial pioneer that he was, for his ideas concerning the prospects for ending war. Not as naive as it sounds, those Europeans had just gone through the great war, and the next one, if it ever occurred was bound to be even more destructive as it proved to be.
Freud responded in September 1932 — very pessimistically. Of course that is obvious to nearly everyone here I would think. That such towering intellects even considered such things may seem worthy of a chuckle. But Freud found it understandable of people as profoundly “cultivated” or “cultured” (to borrow an agricultural terms).
No one ever paid much attention to their correspondence since it was in German, and took place between and Austrian and a German and the Nazis burned all the printed copies fairly swiftly not long after they came to power. Translated long ago into English, it can be found here:
http://www.public.asu.edu/~jmlynch/273/documents/FreudEinstein.pdf
Is it at all possible that this pendulum(of politcal/social tension) will swing the other way? By it’s own weight? It is always darkest before the dawn and all that. The older that I get the quicker that time passes. Our social construct/politics/business practices/government are inevitably going to be shaped by rapidly changing demographics. The one I’ll refer to here is the rise of women and the decline of men. Women are getting educated at an ever increasing rate. Men(young) are getting better at video games. Women are the primary bread winners in more and more homes as men give up even trying to find jobs. I am exposed to what is happening in my daughter’s middle school. She and her friends are engaged and interested in academics and issues. They expect themselves to excel. They are impressively cool and groovy and connected, with what is going on, in a much larger sphere than we ever could. Will this have a positive impact on what appears to be a pretty bleak future?
I don’t see some “left-leaning” indoctrination going on in the school she goes to. I see a serious focus on learning math, english, science and an accountability that surprises me. I read her textbooks. I help with her homework. She constantly has 2 or 3 projects/presentations that she is working on. Any idea that it is some lite-weight, mamby-pamby education that these kids are getting is seriously misinformed. And frankly, the girls are the ones who are kicking ass. How is this going to affect the future of our country and society? It is a short 15-20 years before they are running all of this and we will be reading articles in the Economist asking “Will men ever catch up?”. It provides me a measure of hope.
The issue is not the Constitution, which I believe is unique in history when it was ratified and has served the country well. The issue is us, as Pogo said. We have tortured the Constitution with legal sophistry and actions that deny its spirit and word. As an example we have allowed due process to wither with the Patriot Act and Civil Forfeiture laws. We have allowed perjurers like Clapper to skate with impunity making a mockery of “rule of law”. We have allowed interpretations of the first amendment to include that money equates to speech.
How will changing the Constitution or re-writing a new one, as is possible in a convention, make a difference, when we are feckless and will twist it to suit immediate ends? Better to leave it alone and focus on building honor and integrity in society.
Eric,
I play no game. Just an observation that your post is typical of the hatred (from both the rights and the lefts) that is detrimental to our social fabric. If you could put yourself in the others’ shoes, you’ll find it is easier to accept the comity that Col Lang is talking about.
“To say that a Democrat could not and would not preside over an FBI investigation that would reveal the truth is an admission of the disappearance of the level of comity needed to hold the country together.”
Only brute force holds this country together as it is. The constitution is long dead, there is no rule of law.
There is only power. The U.S Fed Gov is simply a tool for a parasitic elite to enrich themselves.
Perhaps with Trump we have an internecine struggle within the Imperial Elite, perhaps not. Maybe it is all a show for us Plebeians, driving a domestic Divide et Impera.
11B,
Ah, you’re another one that calls someone stating a naked truth that you don’t like a “hater”, etc.
I don’t *want* to kill anyone (except maybe jihadists), much less my fellow Americans. What an awful and weird thing for you to say.
Nor do I hate anyone. Disagree strongly? Yes. Willing to fight them over certain matters if necessary? Yes. Hate’s got nothing to do with it. I’m way too cold blooded and analytical for that. I see the situation, assess the ideologies and mindsets involved and arrive at a conclusion as to where it’s all heading; and I don’t like what I see.
Nor is this over some stupid liberal/conservative dichotomy.
It is over The Constitution and the spirit of the country and those who seek to destroy it. These may be fellow Americans in that they live in the same geography, but their vision for the future has little to do with what makes America, America.
Colonel there do seem to be a lot of Republicans down in this little corner of Texas who do see anyone not agreeing with the approved story-line as ‘liberal’. Perhaps trinlea is transposing those people he/she knows in the analogue world onto the committee. With the occasional poster possibly living the stereotype.
The other points seem valid
TonyL,
You’re not dealing with reality.
Which of the bill of rights are you willing to give up for sake of comity? What aspects of history are you willing to erase? If you’re a white male, how much of a scapegoat are willing to become for comity? How much material wealth? How much freedom?
Because all of that and more is what the left is coming after. That’s not paranoid delusion. I actually read their sources and follow their chatter.
Yes sir I know I am not legally bound. I just feel it to be a good guiding light and moral anchoring point. I am not sure what you mean by the first part of your response. I am all for the approved methods of change. I am against those that would do away with the constitution and its protections. I do not however think that any sort of people power like activities such as a general convention will be permitted by those with a vested interest in the status quo.
I could be wrong and often am.
English,
“… the later Ottoman empire
Or the Byzantines before them. The aspirational notion of America has been severally undermined by the Utopian left since the early 1960’s.
“.. There’s a sense of masses of communities there groping their way towards a common cause, and one so disruptive of the status quo…”
I think you captured the mood of much of the country there.
“That implies the existence of a “They”. An identifiable group within the overclass…”
Yes, I accept that criticism. I did not articulate my point well.
Babak,
Explain to me why a post 1965 immigrant is given special privileges based on race that are denied to pre and post 1965 white Americans.
O’Bryan,
Interesting. Several of my neighbors are pulling their children out of the public schools and sending them to private schools or home schooling. Their children were coming home and lecturing their parents on “white privilege”, “white racism”, that people can be multi-gendered and should try same sex relationships before deciding what preference they would have, that the US Constitution was written by slave holders and is thus a suspect source of law…..you know, all the claptrap that we hear from leftists all day long every day. Do you think that these kids just came up with that crap on their own during recess? Or maybe you think that stuff is groovy truth?
O’Bryan,
” we will be reading articles in the Economist asking “Will men ever catch up?””
It must be news to you but the war on boys has been going on for a number of years now. Sexual discrimination is cool, as long as you do it to the right guys.
Colonel,
I applaud your service to our country. More than anything else, the 2016 election showed that corporate news is fake. Only here at SST and a handful of other blogs is reality being discussed. The truth ferreted out.
I admit I was slow on the uptake. But, the western coup in Ukraine, turning Greece into a penal colony and the new Cold War with Russia are too cataclysmic to be ignored. I grew up and served in the Old Cold War with alliances of nation states in multipolar world. The United States was a nation of constitutional laws. A quiet coup in the West destroyed the old 20th Century framework. The USA is now part of an Empire controlled by a few wealthy multi-nationals. Russia is under attack for not kowtowing to the world Hegemon. The justice system is solely for control of the little people. Anything goes for the rich.
Right now, the American Empire is resurging into land locked wars in Syria/Iraq and Afghanistan that it cannot and will not win. With the next fiscal disaster or military SNAFU; the whole edifice will crumble apart. The only hope is that the next crisis will restore constitutional government by and for the people; if not, the USA will splinter into a multitude of ethnic enclaves at war with each other. If by some amazing good grace, the nuclear red button wasn’t pushed first.
“US is not like the EU, Russia, China et al in that it seems determined to export its views on a wide range of topics and punish those that do not follow them.”
With respect, I don’t think that’s right. We may speak of “US foreign policy” or “the EU foreign policy” but that’s merely a manner of speaking. Particularly in the case of foreign policy there’s no such thing as “the US” or “the EU” or indeed “the UK”. Merely a nexus of politicians and interest groups and ideologues whose motives are seldom revealed to us and whose actions, were they generally known and understood, most of their peoples would deplore.
As for complaining that US politicians lecture other countries on how they should behave, well, if you lived through the Blair era, or saw Cameron in action, then you’d have to admit that in that respect at least the UK leads the field and to spare. That combination of sanctimoniousness and virtuous reproach to lesser breeds is a difficult one to get right but those two gentlemen took to it like ducks to water. I rather fear that Mr Fallon is warming up to continue the tradition but with any luck Mrs May will edge him off into Pensions or somewhere before he hits his stride.
The Colonel’s site is not perhaps the place to indulge in a “our politicians are more dismal than your politicians” competition so we’d better leave it at that. But don’t let’s forget Mrs Merkel, who weeps crocodile tears at Holocaust commemorations – and then goes back to the office to arrange subsidies for more of the same from the Ukrainian neo-Nazis. World beating.
No….I was reacting to your previous tone. I don’t necessarily disagree with anything you said other than their were some pretty broad generalizations. In this reply your tone is quite neutral and I agree 100%.
But I am sick of the personally offended on both sides. I am offended my tax dollars go to kill little kids so Israel can fell secure in their little kingdom. I am offended that Goldman Sachs is apparently above the law. Is this the shining city on the hill? Really?
Not a criticism at all. One of the reasons I read this fascinating site is to try and puzzle out whether there’s anybody steering the bus. I rather think there isn’t.
No idea. My kid hasn’t taken that class yet. She doesn’t care if people have same-sex relationships though, as neither my wife or I do. I can tell you this; she seems to be able to take in information and process it pretty well and doesn’t seem too prejudiced about anything/anyone. Maybe she will get that when she gets to high school.
Another example of left-leaning cultural indoctrination here… the anti-gun movement is definitely a left/liberal phenomenon.
School Withdraws Suspension Of Middle Schooler For “liking” Picture of An Airsoft Gun https://jonathanturley.org/2017/05/10/school-withdraws-suspension-of-middle-schooler-for-liking-picture-of-an-airsoft-gun/
There is another moronic application of the “zero tolerance” policy of public schools out of Ohio at the Edgewood Middle School. Administrators informed the parents of Zachary Bowlin that he was facing suspension because he merely “liked” a picture of an airsoft gun on Instagram. While the school withdrew the suspension after public outcry, there is (again) no indication that anyone will be disciplined for this abusive treatment of a middle schooler.
We have previously followed the suspensions and discipline of students under zero tolerance policies that are used by teachers to justify zero judgment or responsibility. I have long criticized zero tolerance policies that have led to suspensions and arrests of children…
Children have been suspended or expelled for drawing stick figures or wearing military hats or bringing Legos shaped like guns or playing with a stick gun or even having Danish in the shape of a gun or using menacing Level 2 finger guns [links in article for all these examples]. Despite the public outcry over the completely irrational and abusive application of zero tolerance rules, administrators and teachers continue to apply them blindly. If you do not have to exercise judgment, you can never be blamed for any failure. Conversely, even when the public outcry results in a reversals, teachers and administrators never seem punished with the same vigor for showing no judgment or logic in punishing a child.
… We have seen a steady erosion of the free speech rights of students in the last decade.
————-
When I was a kid we played with plastic guns ALL the time. This did not make me want to own or use guns as an adult (tho I have gone shooting a few times with friends).
I don’t know how to categorize this new trend…
Black Students at Harvard Are Holding a Separate Graduation Ceremony http://legalinsurrection.com/2017/05/black-students-at-harvard-are-holding-a-separate-graduation-ceremony/
[great comment] Some of us went to jail in the 60’s to ensure that all of us, black, white, whatever, would be treated the same; no separate living quarters, no back-of-the-bus, no different treatment – Period! A lot of effort, pain, some ruined lives, even some deaths, and this is what our efforts have come to … voluntary segregation as pernicious in its way as any we fought to end. This is damned sad!
———————
Could you please expand on this?
I guess that would be news to me. I don’t see the war on boys on this level. I see that they are buried up to their eyeballs in video games and don’t seem to care about much else. It’s not just boys but young men. Several of our friends have late teen/early twenties men. Same thing all. The girls they have aren’t so consumed. They study. They work. They are off to college. Is this because of some kind of war on the boys? I don’t know. If it is, the the boys are losing but, they don’t seem to care.
My original point was to ask the question; Is this trend going to change how we are governed and interact socially and in business and politics? Is this going to be a good or bad thing?
It is worthwhile for an outsider such as I to comment because I believe I have a slight chance of seeing the forest rather than individual trees. I also have an interest as I am a dual national living alll my life in Australia, so I have no state level “baggage”.
1. Col. Lang is in my opinion right about a convention. Clearly it can go anywhere once started. Given the frailty of human nature, what “should” be fixed in the Constitution won’t be and what “shouldn’t” be touched will be. The aggrieved parties will then fight.
2. The U.S. Economy is now dominated by Corporations engaged in “rent seeking” strategies by virtue of the fact that all politicians require financial contributions to seek and maintain office – these contributions come from institutions (Unions, corporations, etc) and very high net worth individuals.who obtain return on investment by the passing of laws that make them profits and increase their power (rent seeking). The latest example is the attempt at overturning net neutrality. Under such a situation, there is no chance that the outcome of a. Constitutional Convention will NOT represent corporate interests.
3. The leftist/rightist divide observable on some SST subjects of discussion, while heartfelt and perhaps at times charming, is artificial and pointless because “the left” and “the right” are artificial constructs in America and anyone who deeply subscribes to these memes is already lost. The game is much bigger than that. What you are looking at is an attempt by a monied elite to disenfranchise and permanently enslave and suppress the average American. Call it the emergence of a new Aristocracy at least as terrible as the French and Russian models.
But that is a “leftist” concept, right? Not really. Look at the Pelosis, Clintons and other alleged socialists. Chelsea Clinton is even now being groomed for Government office.
4. All issues, education, immigration, healthcare , etc. are solvable on their own, but not while you have corporate hands trying to jerk the steering wheel of the ship of state in their own preferred direction. How do we know? Because other countries have successfully dealt with those problems so there is no reason America can’t. Australia has had a single payer health system for decades. Germany has had a successful education system since at least as early as 1850.
5. Then there are “made up” issues that are used to keep people divided and angry, gay marriage, abortion, LGBTQ whatever……. These are pointless sideshows.
6. In summary, there can be no progress until all Americans, as one man, “pay attention to the man behind the curtain” – the grubby deals between business and politicians from top to bottom of the country.
English Outsider
I drive the bus. pl
Fred–This pre-dated Arnie…it comes out of the 1980s “reforms.” Some good. Some not so good. GATE is another “reform” that ended up not being too great and, don’t get me started on AP classes!
That being said—our local comprehensive public high school of 2200 students sends students all over the US to college. No system is perfect, unfortunately!
Ferrell,
I imagine you reading your proclamation in a stentorian voice. 🙂
In no particular order:
– Baby Boomers have been very successful as a cohort — financially, culturally, aesthetically (well, maybe not aesthetically).
– we’ve certainly had more lawless times in our nation’s history, and times that our government was literally for sale (I’m thinking of the senate during the Gilded Age). Of course I have friends in conservative political philosophy circles who think that our republic has simply gotten too big — that the ratio of constituents to representatives is too large.
– it’s not between the nationalists and the globalists, but between the old and the young. The present belongs to the old, but the future belongs to the young, by which time they’ll be old. Teach..your children well… 😀
– if the globalists win, will we play better soccer, sorry, football, like Brazil, sorry, Brasil?
joints–why the Dems? have you completely given up on the GOP to make a “grand gesture?”
See the Neo-Nazi scandal emerging over the last week in the German army? They keep finding more. Mostly junior officers as per public mention so far. Serious terrorist plots uncovered. One Lt. falsely registered as a Middle Eastern refugee and went to far as to collect social service payments. Arms filched from armories.
Walrus,
You make good points and I agree with most of them. However, I think you are missing something. The globalists and corporatists may be the puppet masters and robber barons, but the people really are divided along lines of left and right. A lot of the people really believe that stuff with religious fervor. Maybe the elites caused them to believe on way or another. What matters is that they do. Why they do means a lot less.
If the people were united in a common vision of America the elites would lose power if they went against that vision. We cannot fight the elites at this stage – though we took a shot at them by electing Trump and with Brexit. We can, though, fight against those among the people that seek further disillusion of a vision of America that once made us great. If that fight were to be won, then the elites would be next.
I’m probably a Quixotic fool, I know. I just don’t feel ok with laying down and watching a great country and a great people go quietly into that good night.
Walrus
Well said.
What the establishment on both the left and right do is get the people clamoring for more government intervention. For bigger and bigger government. The government then favors cartels owned by those that fund the political establishment. Monopoly power. This symbiotic relationship is best exemplified by the revolving door.
The outcome is the Nanny State. Personal responsibility and accountability is out the window. Everyone believes the free lunch is forever.
A good example is the last credit crisis. Government intervenes to “insure” mortgage credit as housing ownership is deemed a “national good”. Fannie & Freddie use the implicit backing of the full faith and credit and grow their balance sheet at an incredible clip over many years. The Fed provides implicit backing to speculative finance which then grows at an incredible clip over many years. The government further intervenes to remove all roadblocks to concentration so that we get Too Big To Fail. When speculation goes awry government intervenes again to bailout the TBTF and speculative finance in general. You can see the similar structure in education finance.
We have government driven anti-competitive structures across many sectors from media to finance to health care. The tax code and regulatory environment is rigged in byzantine fashion to benefit the largest enterprises with the economy of scale to game the system, designed for them. While the politicians extoll the virtues of free enterprise and entrepreneurship in their campaign rhetoric, they fully embrace the oligarchy in office.
Obama & Michelle cavorting with Richard Branson and David Geffen on their yachts in the tropics. And Barack flying to Milan on a private jet and then escorted in a 14 car convoy to the penthouse suite at a hotel where his entourage have two floors and then of course getting paid $3 million for a speech on climate change are the examples of the benefits of being on the same team as the oligarchy. Who can blame them? They’re playing their cards.
The real problem is that the people on both the left and right side of the aisle want more and more government. They don’t want competition. They don’t want personal responsibility. They don’t want accountability for themselves. So how can they demand it of their leaders?
O’Bryan,
You are proving my point by showing mom and dad won’t make time for their sons. I wonder how they got that idea boys don’t matter.
In that case, the civil war is probably inevitable.
Colonel – In using the term “steering the bus” I was speaking figuratively about running the country. Is there a group of people who are deliberately steering the country in the wrong direction, or is it happening more by chance? In my country at least I think it has to be the latter.
I remember some time ago you suggested that the country was better run when run by a WASP elite. That seems paradoxical but I believe it was the same here in the not so distant past. The elite did at least have an interest in the overall fortunes of the country, as a farmer has an interest in the well-being of his stock or the condition of his crops. We now seem to be heading for a 90’s Russia scenario, when all took what they could with no thought for the long term. Anyone in power who wanted could grab the seed corn and damn the next harvest. Solzhenitsyn describes how that worked out. It worked out even worse for the Russians than the dysfunctional system they had before.
The last thing I’d want is an aristocracy back in the saddle but we certainly need someone in the saddle and I’d like it to be the people themselves. Contrary to the general view that most of us are stupid and would eat the seed corn even more voraciously, I find that a far greater proportion of the people I meet in daily life have their wits about them than is the case with the politicians or the ideologues. How to get the people back in the saddle, and that at a time when the seed corn is running out fast, is ultimately the subject you and your commentators are discussing here.
I can’t of course comment on that – the American political system is fundamentally different as far as the mechanics of it go – but I’m sorry that one comment I did make was capable of a wrong interpretation.
LeaNder,
Basically every other time the communists have ascended to power, yeah.
The fact the kulaks are armed here really put a crimp in some plans.
Eric,
You know you nailed “OBryan” to the tree when he takes up a twee, disinterested tone and lies about “well I’ve never heard of that”.
DiF: “Didn’t a Russian geopolitical expert of some sort actually predict this a couple of decades ago?”
Yes. Emmanuel Todd, a Frenchman (although his mother was an American), in his book “After the Empire: The Breakdown of the American Order,” published in English in 2001. He based his argument largely on the same type of demographic data that underlay the book that brought him to fame, “The Final Fall.” The latter work, which was basically Todd’s PhD thesis, predicted the collapse of the Soviet Union. He was 25 years old at the time of publication, which he was strongly but unsuccessfully discouraged by his thesis advisor, who warned him of the ridicule which the book widely received until the late 1980s.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emmanuel_Todd
http://amzn.to/2q7tUHj
Their presence is having an impact.
Post 1965 immigrants are seen as foot soldiers by Geroge Soros and other oligarchs and I am pretty certain that they will be used in such capacity if needed one day. There are now 50 million foreign born people in America and that number is estimated to double within the next 30 years. This demographic shift is what’s giving the oligarchs the confidence to brazenly attack the traditional American culture.
We would have to put the capital in Manchester or Concord to compensate New Hampshire for the loss of their imperial presidential primary circus! Would also be more central.
I took it another step: per capita GDP in New England is now more than $60,000, higher than US as a whole with $56,000. New England might be lower as an independent country, but still high enough to provide.
Alas, since I wrote the original comment I learned that the SSBNs are now all in Kings Bay, GA or Puget Sound, WA. Maybe a few SSNs from Groton still have nuke Tomahawks, but I doubt it.
Something freer than Europe and Canada and less brutal than Texas is what I thought. Keep the Bill of Rights (Massachusetts Declaration of Rights), start from scratch with the rest. A parliamentary system? Why not? No overweening executive. I don’t know why some state hasn’t tried it already.
One problem with the USA now is that the states haven’t tried or are constrained by the feds from trying more new systems. I wanted Vermont to go through with their announced single payer health care system, don’t know what happened.
Valissa,
I know. My wife was a teacher (middle school) for many years.She left the profession just as leftist ideology began to fully permeate the curriculum and general culture in the schools. Anyone who doubts this has occurred is either blind, deaf and dumb or a leftist so fully indoctrinated that they think it’s wonderful.
EO
No argument from me. Blair prior to Iraq. Cameron’s speech to the House on Syrian air strikes made me cringe and ashamed to be British. I forced myself to watch 2hrs of that very painful debate of which only Julian Lewis’ 8 minutes seemed aligned with any kind of reality.
I have no doubt that our Borg would be every bit as damaging as theirs given the same ability to effect change. The difference is if your country is being threatened by blocking of aid or unilateral sanctions against your banks, ships or other industries by the US for not towing the line on patents, copyrights, trading partners etc. it is a much bigger problem than if it is just little old Blighty. Likewise in the UN or any or multi-lateral organisation the US’s ability to apply pressure is the difference. Back in the days of the British Empire defying us would have had consequence but now not so much.
I do NOT want to see the dissolution of the Union, nor should anyone else.
It pains me to see so many comments here taking such a cavalier attitude to the break-up of the Union.
If such a thing were to come to pass, the result would not be a patchwork of city-states existing in enlightened harmony. Nor would it resemble a “Walking Dead” survival scenario.
When contemplating a new civil war, the unstated assumption is that the military will side with rural, red state Americans.
In my humble opinion, the dissolution of the Union would simply open the door for a domestic corporatist/military junta/dictatorship, or domination by a foreign power, under which the “bi-coastal liberal elites,” city-dwellers, AND rural Americans would suffer.
The fact that we will ALL suffer- as is the case with all wars- is why it MUST be avoided. We must find ways to compromise with one another. Dissolution is not, cannot be the answer. “I would save the union.”
Col. Lang, thank you for providing a forum for these important discussions.
Babak,
See chapter 14.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Title_15_of_the_Code_of_Federal_Regulations
Here’s an example of someone who became a US citizen and thus gained preferred status:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shahid_Khan
Nick
Very interesting. So far we have several who would want to be citizens of the Commonwealth of New England and I roused HCG’s ire by postulating a possible People’s Republic of Ecotopia in the NW. What other bits and pieces would you expect to emerge? pl
You have such a way with words, unfortunately you are wrong about the left. Your anger is coming through loud and clear.
I respectfully disagree.
I think the kids were taught to say this by their parents, who dislike public schools for many reasons.
I’ll grant you this, your handle is apt.
But very financially successful? Put the pipe down, sir.
http://www.cbsnews.com/news/gulf-in-needed-retirement-savings-for-baby-boomers/
Google Boomer+Retirement and you’ll have some reading cut out for you. I hope you are not impervious to evidence.
I’ll leave it at that.
Col. Lang-
I think I have reached the limit of any feeble powers of prognostication that I may possess.
However, I will say, that in the scenario I outlined above, “pockets” of democracy/republics simply would not exist, in any significant sense.
The dictatorship I envision would rule over all. Rather than destroying the liberal cities, the dictatorship would seek to control them in order to maintain and harness their economic output.
Key to this control would be a campaign of rooting out resistance. There would be much bloodshed on the part of all Americans such that we would look back with nostalgia and regret on the partisan divisions which separate us so deeply and bitterly today.
Once started, this fire would burn hot and smolder long. I reiterate, we must not allow this to happen.
Thank you.
Yes, your first paragraph brought back some bad memories. I should add, however, that I don’t feel ashamed at all. OK, maybe ashamed of belonging to the same species when Blair was at the top of his form, but no more specific than that. You might think it’s a bit difficult getting behind the team these days when you see what our politicians are like. But ever more frequent resort to the thinking behind the term “Her Majesty’s Loyal Opposition” gets over the problem for most of us.
On your second we might amicably disagree. On foreign policy, and looking at what the two sets of politicians + cronies get up to there, I’d say that from the point of view of the prey – the prey being the foreigners who happen to live on the chessboard squares – there’s no odds between the lion and the jackal except that the jackal is more furtive.
The Aristocrats of England have done a decent job, in my opinion, since the death of Cromwell; in my opinion.
Ah! I see… it’s that river… in Egypt…
Can’t remember the exact name…
I am sorry but I do not see anything wrong here with this Horatio Alger type of story.
Jack
You’ve hit the nail on the head!
The example you gave is exactly how the game is played. The left pushed Fannie, Freddie, FHA. Both the left & right supported Greenspan and Bernanke as Wall St learned from LTCM and took mortgage backed credit volume to the stratosphere. The flippers got in the game as it was such an easy way to riches with all the no-doc financing. Bill Clinton, Bob Rubin, Larry Summers with the assist of the Republican establishment repealed Glass-Steagal and got the TBTF going. Then the establishment from both sides – during both Dubya’s and Obama’s administration, made sure that Wall St was made whole with Bernanke doing the heavy lifting after subprime blew up the whole credit edifice. Holder who rotated in from a Wall St law firm made sure the clock ran out on the statute of limitations. Perfect scam in which both the left & right are complicit.
Yeah, many Americans love big government as they get some cheese too.
tim s wrote:
Colonel, Nobody who loves their country/union wants to see it dissolved, assuming that it still is in its essence the country/union that it is in their hearts and minds. The question in my mind is, what is the USA? I know what we’re told that it is, in the classical sense, which was the union as our founding fathers envisioned it, with a representative balanced governing body that has checks to limit power, with the people deciding who rules them and being represented by those elected. Is that what it is now? In a recent thread (http://turcopolier.typepad.com/sic_semper_tyrannis/2017/05/httpswwwclausewitzcommobileprinciplesofwarhtm.html), you posted the following: “This seems to be acceptable to the Israeli/R2P satellite state called the US a satellite which was once a proud country. A country for which my ancestors literally fought since the 17th Century.” I think you hit the nail on the head with this statement. It seems that all of the political maneuvering both inside and outside of the USA by those elected (or non-elected) officials is largely controlled by the most powerful, and these are globalists, i.e. not Americans. The destruction of the USA as good-old Americans see it seems to be the goal of the globalists. The color revolution being waged inside the USA with the SJWs, antifa’s, etc is a difference in degree only from that waged by ISIS elsewhere. Seeing that the mass media only adds fuel to the fire by generally supporting/advocating for these subversive types and NEVER supporting the side of the traditional Americans lends credence to this being a color revolution rather than just a butting of heads of people with different opinions. The mass media, as always, is just hauling water for TPTB, the money changers, neocons, as you will. Is dissolution what THEY want??? Is dissolution of traditional Europe what THEY want as well? Europe looks to be in an advancing state of dissolution. Is the USA any different? All of the West is largely controlled by the money changers. George Carlin’s “AMERICAN DREAM” (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=acLW1vFO-2Q) bit sums our situation up as well as anything I’ve seen. A dissolution of any society where this is the most accurate thing that can be said about it seems inevitable. Is it possible that the money changers want global domination, and that a healthy USA and Europe would be the greatest impediment to that goal, in their opinion? By deception they rule. By deception they wage war. Our politicians are deceptor marionettes only. If votes are tallied and a new constitutional convention is staged, it will not be because the Americans wanted it (not including the young dreamers who don’t know any better, or those Americans who don’t know shit beyond the Disneyesque portrayals shown to them and parrot those portrayals – but then that just goes back to TPTB).
VV
“…turning Greece into a penal colony…”
You throw this aside about Greece and I cannot resist to respond to it, but let me say first that
I very much go to your comments first when opening the SST, because I value them as very appropriate and wise and short. However, this time I have a “beef” with your statement about Greece. I am not a Greek and have never been to Greece, so my knowledge is limited to what I get from the media, be it MSM or internet or books. From what I understand about Greek economic problems, it is a mixture of internal inefficiency, corruption, and collusion of international banking capital with the “2 thousand rich families” and the Greek government. Sure, the common people in Greece are suffering, and they are not getting any help from the said “2 thousand families” and the elected government. So, I would not phrase it in terms “poor Greeks, they do not deserve their plight, they are the victims of the foreigners, mostly those evil Germans” who should eternally pay for their crimes in WW2.
For more about these issues I recommend to read the books by H.W. Sinn “Die Target Falle” (Hanser Verl. 2012) and “Der Euro” (Hanser Verl. 2015)
and a very thorough SST discussion in 2015:
http://turcopolier.typepad.com/sic_semper_tyrannis/2015/07/greece-and-the-eu.html
and the article in Frankurter Allgemeine Zeitung about how the person who tries to speak truth in Greece is treated by greek judiciary (former chief statistician sentenced to prison for not being a patriot)
http://www.faz.net/aktuell/wirtschaft/eurokrise/griechenland/berufungsprozess-haftstrafe-fuer-griechischen-chefstatistiker-14948460.html
Well . . . In 1981 Pierre Trudeau repatriated the constitution. It’s all Canada’s now. England doesn’t run the show any longer.
It’s a still a constitutional monarchy. Canada’s Head of State is still the Queen of England. The PM is only the PM, and the Governor-General is the Queen’s Representative in Canada. Canadians seem to like it that way. Colonialism dies hard.
Whereas the Articles of Confederation in the US lasted a mere decade before the 1789 Constitution, Canada’s equivalent lasted from 1867, or something like that, until Trudeau wrote their constitution in 1983.
The US Prez is unique, or almost unique, among world leaders. He is both Head of Government and Head of State. (Israel has a PM and a President.)
MRW
Hey, I love Canada, and am a dual national. That does not change the fact that the Canadian confederation was created by the UK after agitation by people like Macdonald and Laurier. The British did not create the US, far from it. One of my Anglo ancestors, Amos Hall, fought in the Continental Army against the British for 6 years and then 20 years later moved to Quebec and became a Crown Loyalist. Go figure. pl
LeaNder and Babak,
The ethnic stock that made up the American nation for 300+ years is being replaced via uncontrolled immigration, which is really a form of large scale invasion.
The globalists that are driving this policy are using immigrants as a way to permanently reduce and eliminate the political power of Americans of European dissent. Our country is slowly transforming to something that we don’t recognize anymore. The behavior of the ruling elite in our country is weird and alien. It appears to be something from the 3rd world. CNN is not American. Its not our news. Its foreigner’s news.
I walk around the streets of California and feel like a foreigner in my own country. I turn on CNN and see that they are trying to overthrow our democratically elected president and I feel like I am watching some foreign news outlet. I watch our political elite manage our country like its a 3rd world country.
I understand about California; but the social and political problems of US are not caused by those immigrants.
The foreigners; i.e. those who do not belong to the “ethnic stock that made up the American nation for 300+ years” were not the ones who infiltrated or otherwise hijacked the Office of the US Secretary of Defense in order to usher in the US-Iraq War of 2003.
Similarly, those foreigners – or some such like them – did not cause the Economic Crisis of 2008; those who caused it almost uniformly belonged to the “ethnic stock that made up the American nation for 300+ years”.
The machinations of Republicans and Democrats against one another are not run or caused by the foreign element; far from it, it is pursued by the members of the same “ethnic stock that made up the American nation for 300+ years”.
The foreigner brought with them olive oil, rice, yogurt, dolma, uzu, noodles, gamelon, oud, filial piety, respect for authority, Islam, Hinduism, Buddhism, Sikhism, etc. They are not the ones who are harming the United States – without a doubt.
Foreign immigrants did not destroy Detroit, they did not cause the decay of Oakland or St. Louis, the demise of the so-called Rust Belt.
Fanto,
Greek’s problems derive from adopting the Euro. They could no longer denominate their debts in their own currency, which they used to have control over. No longer.
Your attitude towards Greece is the typical German sneer about that country. And Germany refuses to help, unlike what the US did for Germany after WWII. We ploughed billions into helping your country rebuild.
“The foreigners; i.e. those who do not belong to the “ethnic stock that made up the American nation for 300+ years” were not the ones who infiltrated or otherwise hijacked the Office of the US Secretary of Defense in order to usher in the US-Iraq War of 2003.
Similarly, those foreigners – or some such like them – did not cause the Economic Crisis of 2008; those who caused it almost uniformly belonged to the “ethnic stock that made up the American nation for 300+ years”.”
Actually they are from the stock of newly arrived nineteenth century immigrants from central Europe with their undying hatred of Russia and psychological need to fulfill the mystical myth from the book of Daniel by destroying Persia to save their idealized state on the Land. And they will keep on going until someone or something stops them.
I like the way you think, Green Zone Cafe!
That is what I said above, that the pre-1965 crowd is indulging itself in dangerous past times.
By the way, here is the purported Shrine of Daniel the Prophet in Iran:
http://www.livius.org/articles/place/susa/susa-photos/susa-tomb-of-daniel/
MRW
You are correct that Greece’ problems happened because of adoption of Euro. No disagreement there. You are also correct that Marshall Plan provided Germany with a big amount of funds, slightly less than 1.5 Billion US Dollars (in 1952 dollars) over the years 1948 – 1952. Germany received about 10% of the grand total of the Marshall Plan funds. (https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marshallplan); Btw. Greece received about 0.6 Billion from Marshall Plan. Germany has provided more help to Greece by 2012 than the Marshall plan provided to Germany.(H.W. Sinn “Die Target Falle”, 2012; p.283. According to HW Sinn the amount is over 10 times that of Marshall Plan to Germany.)Your attitude towards Germany I will leave without comment.
My mistake. I thought you were implying that old time WASPs were responsible. Should have read and reacted slower.
As for Daniel’s Shrine, it brings to mind what kind tourist trade could be had if Iran and the US ever reach an understanding.