Category: Marxists

Good Title

Eco-Crap, Marxists

Joel Kotkin, one of my favorite writers (among so many) at the estimable City Journal, has described the “watermelon” (Green outside, Red inside) mindset perfectly:

Climate Stalinism

The Left’s fixation on climate change is cloaked in scientism, deploying computer models to create the illusion of certainty.  Ever more convinced of their role as planetary saviors, radical greens are increasingly intolerant of dissent or any questioning of their policy agenda.  They embrace a sort of “soft Stalinism,” driven by a determination to remake society, whether people want it or not—and their draconian views are penetrating the mainstream.  “Democracy,” a writer for Foreign Policy suggests, constitutes “the planet’s biggest enemy.”

And right there, in that last quote, is the whole game given away.  As Kotkin observes, most people outside the wealthy and academia are hugely skeptical of the whole “global warming / -cooling / climate change” movement because they have correctly deduced that regardless of all those laudable intentions to “save the planet”, the final costs of doing so would be catastrophic for their own livelihoods and prosperity, e.g.:

Imagine what will happen if a President Elizabeth Warren bans fracking in places like Texas, North Dakota, Ohio, West Virginia, and Pennsylvania;  in Texas alone, by some estimates, 1 million jobs would be lost.  Overall, according to a Chamber of Commerce report, a full ban would cost 14 million jobs—far more than the 8 million lost in the Great Recession.

Confronted with the abject failure of Communism everywhere it’s been put into practice, all that’s left for these would-be Stalinists is to try to bypass democracy and enforce their control over the population by diktat  — the very definition of Stalinism — using climate change as the fig-leaf.

I’ve written about this topic so often I’m starting to bore myself;  in Maskirovka (2017) and Proper Analysis (2019), to list but two of the more comprehensive posts, I outlined the eco-freaks’ mindset and the (failed) accounting behind the move to curb “greenhouse gases” respectively.  And of course, on any number of occasions I’ve debunked the junk statistics (which Kotkin derisively calls “scientism”) that these Marxists are using to try to give their loony theories some form of respectability.

Make no mistake:  these control freaks and their lickspittle fellow-travelers in the mainstream media are not going to quit.  We’ve already seen how has-been President Urkel’s EPA passed regulations which furthered the goals of the watermelons, stopping or delaying fracking, construction of new pipelines and so on.  Expect the same, or worse, from future Administrations run by Communists of the Warren / Sanders / [insert socialist candidate here]  ilk — which is why these bastards need to be implacably opposed at every turn, whether in local / state government, Congress or the White House.

Now, more than ever, is the time when we need to deny them ever getting their hands on the levers of power because once they do, it won’t just be your guns they come after:  it’ll be your cars, your jobs and your money.

And after they get into power via the much-maligned democratic system, don’t expect them allow themselves to be voted out of office too easily, either.

Under the Communists, the First Amendment will increasingly come under attack (“hate speech”), ballot boxes will get stuffed (by illegal immigrants), and regulations will be promulgated which bypass the legal system.  And if that little shit Beta O’Rourke did nothing else, he announced with absolute clarity these would-be Stalinists’ intentions towards the fourth  box.

I can’t put it any clearer than that.

In the past, I’ve treated Nov 19 (National Ammo Day) and April 15 (Buy A Gun Day) as two separate entities.  That time, I think, has passed.

 

Not that my Readers would need any reminders or encouragement, of course…

Only 70%?

Bad News, Marxists, Politics

Found here:

A new national poll has found that upwards of 70 percent of Americans, if you can believe it, are now fully convinced that the formerly United States of America is on the brink of a second civil war.

While I probably agree with the conclusion, I have to ask the following questions of it, because the conditions under which revolution may occur in this country are quite different, depending on the political philosophy of the would-be revolutionaries.

1)  Which proportion of that 70% are conservatives, which are Marxists, and which are sorta-undecided?

2)  What are the different scenarios, for each respondent group, for a revolution to take place?

Taking the second question first, there are a couple of situations in which a group would say “Fuck that shit” and go for the guns.

a)  Trump is reelected as POTUS in 2020. The Left, having failed to remove him through bullshit Russian-collusion and even-more bullshit impeachment processes, goes to volume 11 on the hair-on-fire lunacy scale, and takes to the streets in the cities (mostly Marxist enclaves like Portland), rioting, looting and causing general mayhem as seen in Ferguson MO a few years back.  Call this the “Antifa” scenario.  While these anarcho-Marxists scream loudly, I don’t see that this would be a credible threat, at least not for long because there aren’t that many of them — maybe a few thousand — and frankly, if martial law were declared (National Guard response), these fools would be squashed like bugs.  Now, even if (say) 50% of that 70% would react badly to Orange Man Reelected OMG!!!, while there would be massive outcries by the mainstream media, academia and other assorted Commies, only a tiny percentage of those would actually start a revolution.  And forget Blacks and Hispanics taking to the streets en masse ;  the Trump economy has given them jobs and income, and the loony-Leftist policies (like rampant abortion, wokeness and high taxes) put forward by the passengers in the Clown Car have disenchanted those two groups, or at least the more-conservative members thereof.  Don’t expect some Black or Hispanic guy who’s been working at a series of new construction sites for a couple years (thanks to Trumponomics) to down tools and join the Pantifa Parade, either in person or in sympathy — and especially not if he actually voted for Trump in 2020.

b)  Trump is defeated in 2020 by one of the assorted Commies in the clown car.  And let’s just say for the sake of argument that there is credible evidence of massive voter fraud by the Commies in places like Texas, California, Illinois, Florida and so on — I can’t see there being a conservative revolution even if we think that voting skullduggery is deserving of it.  (History is on my side here;  the typical conservative response to an unfavorable electoral outcome is to vote in greater numbers the next time.)

Where I think there would  be a conservative revolution is if the new Comrade President immediately embarks on the usual tired Marxist agenda of raising taxes, installing Medicare For All, oppressive ecological policies like bans on fracking, defunding the military  — you know, all those stupid initiatives that would kill the U.S. economy (pace  Venezuela).  That would not necessarily ignite a conservative revolution by itself, but it would certainly make a foundation for one.

So what could trigger a conservative revolution?

Property confiscation — say, when Comrade President and his/her Politburo lackeys appropriate savings accounts, IRAs, “excessive” wealth and so on — would cause a firestorm of not only anger, but resistance.  If you look at all instances in our history where people started shooting government agents, it was in response to property infringement.

And then we come to the Big One, the one that would guarantee a conservative populace to start shooting from the rooftops…

Gun confiscation.  I am pretty sure that the Beto Plan would not only fail, but fail spectacularly, and with massive bloodshed.  Even an incrementalist move towards confiscation of, say “assault weapons” (through “buybacks”) as the thin end of the confiscation wedge would be met with massive non-compliance.  And if the Commies then were to move to coerce compliance, that  would be when the SHTF, in no uncertain terms.

I also think that if the Marxists do take over, and their little Youth Brigades continue to riot — no bets, of course  they will — such riots would increasingly be met by armed conservative resistance.  And attempts by law enforcement to stop the conservatives shooting would end in more bloodshed than I think the authorities could handle — always assuming that the police would obey their orders, that is.  (And that is a HUGE, and so far unknown “if” — ditto for door-to-door confiscation, a.k.a. the Feinstein/O’Rourke wet dream.)

My guess, in the end, is that the “70% of the population” number is correct.  The composition  of that 70%, however, is going to depend on the circumstances.

And now, if you’ll excuse me, I’m off to the range.

Outcomes

Marxists

From Kruiser at PJMedia:

When I was pondering the divide between Right and Left in America last week I didn’t go over the thing that may keep us separated forever:  American liberals are now incapable of even seeing political slogans they don’t like without descending into a Sylvia Plath-ish oven-seeking madness.

Oh be still, my beating heart.  If political slogans really could push Leftists into lemming-like mass suicide, I’d want to elevate Trump into President-For-Life.

Capital Flight

Business, Marxists, Politics

I haven’t spoken at all about the situation in Hong Kong before, mostly because there wasn’t much to be said:  (somewhat) free colony opposes colonial power’s aggression, mayhem ensues.

Several people have wondered why the ChiComs haven’t sent in the tanks, à la Tienanmen Square, to crush the waves of protests, but the answer is simple:  Hong Kong provides a means whereby the ChiCom government can move money around the world without provoking too much notice because currency movement in Hong Kong is completely unregulated.  Crush the protests, make Hong Kong just another province (like, say, Jiangxi or Shandong) and that flexibility disappears.

It is, however, a two-edged sword.  What has transpired since the protests began is that capital (money owned by individuals, that is) has been pouring out of Hong Kong and flooding into Singapore — to name just one such destination — thence on to parts unknown.  Which means that if Beijing does finally send the tanks into Hong Kong, they’re likely to find, like Old Mother Hubbard, that the cupboard is bare.  And the flow of  money is truly a deluge:  if you study how many major corporations have been purchased by Chinese-sourced money over the past few months, you’d be amazed.  Even better is that by and large, the corporations being thus purchased are characterized by their cash flow operations — in other words, the Chinese billionaires, canny businessmen that they are, are not just parking their money under an offshore mattress, they’re putting that cash to work and generating a revenue stream.

The ChiComs may not only be running out of other people’s money — they may soon be running out of their own.

Couldn’t happen to a nicer bunch of totalitarians.

By the way, you may have noticed that the above is somewhat short of details;  that’s because if I say more, I could jeopardize my several sources who are not only well placed in the area, but who do a ton of business there too and are close to said wealthy people.  One can never be too careful when dealing with Commie bastards.

Heroic Murderous Bastards

Marxists

Many years back we took the kids to see the Smithsonian in D.C., only to be ambushed by the pathetic, self-flagellating exhibit of the 1941 Japanese-American internment.

Surprise, surprise, they’ve done it again.  Apparently, they also love that rat bastard Commie Che Guevara:

Che would write tender poetry for his wife, and when he departed for the Congo in 1965, left tape recordings of his favorite romantic verse, including Pablo Neruda’s “Goodbye: Twenty Love Poems”. He also left a letter for his four children to be opened and read only in the case of his death.

Oh, how nice.  Here’s how the Left prefers to remember the murderous asshole:

…while my favorite Che pic is this one:

And I find it satisfyingly ironic that when faced with his own death at the hands of his captors, the sadistic prick cried like a little girl and begged for his life.

Sic semper tyrannis.

And Speaking Of Commies…

Business, Marxists

I see that the strike at GM has ended:

Negotiations between General Motors and the United Auto Workers reached a tentative contract deal on Wednesday that could end a month-long strike that brought the company’s US factories to a standstill.

Good.  Now they can go back to making mostly crappy cars* that few people want to buy.

Driven up by the longest economic expansion in American history, auto sales appear to have peaked and are now heading in the other direction.

I would be curious to see how the auto sales numbers break down between new and used cars.  Also, between cars and trucks/SUVs.  Anyone have any ideas or info on this?

But here’s an interesting statement as to perhaps a good reason why GM is tanking:

GM and other car makers are also struggling to make the transition to electric and autonomous vehicles.

…which very few people want to buy.  Nothing like a sinking company investing in products that people either don’t want, don’t need or hate the thought of.

Maybe they should trash all their current car designs and go into the retro/mod business:

Hell, they probably would;  except that, knowing GM, they’d make them electric-only and ergo  doomed.

*  Except for maybe some Cadillac models and the Corvette.  Note that I’m specifically excluding GM trucks, which are generally quite good, from the above comments.