I've been living in London for less than a year, and I find it very hard to judge how great the danger is of things getting worse. On the one hand, I live in a good neighbourhood and have had virtually no bad experiences, and there is no sense among the great majority of people that anything might go wrong. On the other hand, one does occasionally hear talk, for example from a woman I know whose husband is from northern Ireland. He apparently sees the writing on the wall, and speaks exactly like this Betz fellow.
Betz also mentions that Canada is not in a much better position, something I can well imagine, having seen not only the immense rise in housing (and other) costs there, which will make life hard for a population that, a mere decade ago, could expect real prosperity, but also the all-out attack by the liberal regime in Canada against Canadian identity and history (the one thing that might hold people together as prosperity disappears) - and this while cranking immigration to levels previously unimagined.
I will hold on to my US passport. I have a feeling I may be headed there before too long.
I lived in London suburbs (Pinner) for a wonderful year in 2007-2008. Have you yet seen the crowds after a football match? The crowds at Notting Hill Carnival? And sad to say, the protests from last summer that I saw filmed? Thoughts? Some of those participating in such things - vast swathes of people - can decide to rise up, with violence, I believe. That said, I personally think social media control and unjust jail sentences are keeping things in check for now. And the BBC has a much, much better hold on people than CNN ever did because, while it is propaganda now, and very concerning, it is not as extreme in its degree of propaganda as organizations such as CNN.
Note: I deplore censorship of opinion and wrongful jailing. That should stop no matter what it may or may not be holding back. (And yes, I need to, and will, listen to Perry's podcast on this subject).
"And the BBC has a much, much better hold on people than CNN ever did because, while it is propaganda now, and very concerning, it is not as extreme in its degree of propaganda as organizations such as CNN."
Well now, that's the problem, isn't it? Increasing polarization leads to propaganda as the sources of information become more partisan, finding truth in their own outlets and little of merit on the other side. Hence, OAN, Breitbart, and Fox News (before the libel suit) had definitive evidence the 2020 election was stolen. Meanwhile, CNN and other mainline news organizations had equally definitive evidence it was not. Now I imagine you might stretch the meaning of "definitive" to cover both sides, but in the world of evidence and facts there can only be one "definitive" truth. Until both sides can agree upon a common epistemology, one that separates facts from theory, truth from opinion, polarization will continue to divide and democracy - real democracy not the rhetorical kind - cannot exist in such an environment.
“Betz also mentions that Canada is not in a much better position, something I can well imagine, having seen not only the immense rise in housing (and other) costs there, which will make life hard for a population that, a mere decade ago, could expect real prosperity, but also the all-out attack by the liberal regime in Canada against Canadian identity an history (the one thing that might hold people together as prosperity disappears) - and this while cranking immigration to levels previously unimagined.”
Speaking as a Canadian I can personally see, alas, no major flaw in Betz’s analysis and assessment except that the roots of the cancerous process he describes far predate the current Liberal regime - going back to at least the 60’s. I would also not put the main blame on the Liberal Party but on the Canadian people, both English and French, a substantial majority of whom have supported the values of the Liberal Party and their “progressive” allies and kept them in power. I would not be surprised if, when our ruin is complete, the basic attitude of the Canadian people will be similar to that reflected in the riposte to Jeremiah of the exiled Jewish women, their nation destroyed, in Egypt (44: 15 - 19):
“Then all the men which knew that their wives had burned incense unto other gods, and all the women that stood by, a great multitude, even all the people that dwelt in the land of Egypt, in Pathros, answered Jeremiah, saying, “As for the word that thou hast spoken unto us in the name of the LORD, we will not hearken unto thee. But we will certainly do whatsoever thing goeth forth out of our own mouth, to burn incense unto the queen of heaven, and to pour out drink offerings unto her, as we have done, we, and our fathers, our kings, and our princes, in the cities of Judah, and in the streets of Jerusalem: for then had we plenty of victuals, and were well, and saw no evil. But since we left off to burn incense to the queen of heaven, and to pour out drink offerings unto her, we have wanted all things, and have been consumed by the sword and by the famine. And when we burned incense to the queen of heaven, and poured out drink offerings unto her, did we make her cakes to worship her, and pour out drink offerings unto her, without our men?”
A friend and reader of this Substack, an English expat who lives here in Budapest, just shared this with me. The guy in the video is American, but, says my English friend, this is the best single explanation he has seen for why Britain is falling apart: https://www.youtube.com/watch?app=desktop&v=gWPJtXndRIE
Happy 58th! You’re exactly one year and one month younger than me.
Betz’s prognosis for Europe is especially grim because based on concrete metrics. I suspect most of us would include the US in this prognosis except that with populists at the helm we have at least a *chance* of pulling out of the identity spiral.
And the thing about Trump is—he’s obviously not the white supremacist the left claims. He’s a pragmatist. He doesn’t *care* about race.
This arguably makes our chances better. But here will be the heavy lifting: how are Trump’s supporters going to convince our left-adjacent midwit voters that Trump’s attacks on 1) the Blob and 2) DEI are not “white” attacks on black and brown Americans. Because at some point there will be pain, especially if Trump really sticks with tariffs. Our identity left, in disarray now, will certainly weaponize that pain. There's no way we can be confident come August there won't be another Summer of Floyd scenario playing out.
Still, compared to where we're at, western Europe really does seem screwed. I’m thinking especially the UK, France, Germany. But the US is going to need luck and persistence not to sink back into the same muck.
Over 50% each of Hispanic and Asians voted democrat and 80% of blacks who did not stay home voted democrat. I couldn’t find definitive numbers regarding Indian but looks like 31% voted Trump. Interesting, I wonder how will those voters be kept on side?
Another Scorpio here, year of the Horse. But I’m glad I don’t believe in that stuff anymore, notwithstanding that God created the constellations and the Zodiak (in Hebrew, the Mazzaroth). Man put his own meaning on it and, voila, astrology.
We in the US also benefit from a long history of integrating immigrants, including from non-Anglophone cultures. The concept of American-ness, such as it is, is quite elastic. Multiracial marriages and births are also on the rise. I think most of the immigrant groups here now are quite open to identifying as American, and are not overly attached to the cultures of their home countries. Are they proud of where they came from? Sure. But they are not practicing separatism and generally intend to assimilate. They are authentically proud to be American. Are there exceptions this? Yes, I think so, but those groups are relatively small in number.
Europe is in a very different and much worse situation. Most of our immigrants are from the Americas and therefore come from Western or primarily Western traditions, being mostly Christian and speaking Western languages or Western based Creoles. Most of Europe’s on the other hand are… Not. And they are far more separatist and disinclined to assimilate, assuming their host cultures had good records of assimilating immigrants in the first place (which they mostly do not). They come from older and significantly more cohesive and xenophobic cultures than those in the Americas, almost all of which are essentially multiracial and multicultural themselves. They come to Europe for the money, not to assimilate, and have little but contempt for the societies taking them in.
Yes. It's largely true. Many of the 2nd-generation immigrants into the US in recent years have taken up the "anti-colonialist" left critique of America, but that's only those who ended up drinking the Kool-Aid in university. Which is still not many. And that still isn't the problem that Europe faces. You draw the distinction well.
We assimilated European migrants and strictly limited other groups until LBJ and his ‘guilt reforms’ of 1965. The populace has grown more divided with each successive generation. I don’t understand how people around my age seem to think it’s always been massively diverse; it simply never was except for pockets here and there. Our elections are now pretty much balanced on the edge of a knife. Even now the senate cannot afford to lose more than 3 votes. It was a decisive victory not a landslide. Europeans are in a better place because they are still a massive majority; all some clever person needs to do is rally them to action; while we will eventually become a minority even if the border is now slammed shut. There will be a prevailing culture; will it still be what our ancestors built and bled to bequeath us? I’m not as optimistic as either of you. Our fate was decided 60 years ago, Europe still has a chance if they can locate their spines.
According to Google, the UK is still at least 75% White British (an undisputed majority). I don't believe that included Scots and the native population of Northern Ireland (both Protestant and Catholic). Add it all together you get at least 85% indigenous population of the UK. The UK doesn't need a Civil War. It needs a nationwide peasant uprising. It needs a commoner (working class urban and agrarian rural) led insurrection that brings Westminster to it's knees and forces the Ruling Class Elites to harken to the concerns of the majority...or else! The UK needs a revolution. Then when the indigenous majority of the UK holds the power then they can collectively decide what to do with its foreign colonizers that the Ruling Class Elites opened the gates wide open for. All of these foreigners have homelands. They all have nations of their own that they can return to. Where can the indigenous majority of the UK go? They can't go to India or Pakistan or Afghanistan or the Middle East, the Levant or the Maghreb. They can't go to Africa or Asia. I guess you could say they could go to the United States or Canada or Australia or New Zealand, but even those places are not their ancestral homeland. Their ancestral homeland England, Wales, Scotland and Ulster. They should never feel like foreigners in their own ancestral homeland. Call that fascism, call that nativism. Call that xenophobic. Call that what you will, but isn't it the truth? Everyone should feel safe and secure in their own ancestral homeland whether it's the Palestinians in Gaza or the West Bank, or American Indians in the United States, or the Irish Catholics who marched for Civil Rights in Derry and Belfast not long ago. Or Welsh miners who were sold out by Maggie Thatcher or working class Englishmen and women living in poverty while Westminster rolls out the Red Carpet for foreigners (who are economic migrants) who have nations of their own. England should look like English, Wales should look Welsh, Scotland should look Scottish. I mean could you imagine Pakistan looking English?
I think the Elites want to turn it into a Native British vs. Muslim conflict. If they can get Natives and Muslims to kill each other while they continue to rule, that's probably the goal. Divide and conquer. Or maybe they'll pretend to embrace the natives and throw them some scraps to pacify them but maintain control. The Ruling Class are the problem. Until they're violently yanked off of their high pedestals they'll continue to use and abuse the masses. Maybe that sounds Marxist. Maybe it is. Nothing's going to change if the Ruling Class Elites are allowed to keep their wealth and remain “Elite”. That's my problem with MAGA too. It's too Establishment Populist. Don't get me wrong it's better than the alternative, but maybe the MAGA victory was the American Ruling Class throwing a bone to the masses. To pacify us while they maintain their wealth, status and control and live another day so they can oppress us again.
Re: It needs a commoner (working class urban and agrarian rural) led insurrection that brings Westminster to it's knees and forces the Ruling Class Elites to harken to the concerns of the majority...or else!
If you mean that metaphorically, then I would agree. There should be a mass movement of such people to vote for a party or parties which promises to do something about the problems (the Reform UK party?)
Ahead of everyone in the polls now, though I’ve no idea how efficiently that vote is distributed. Last time they got 14% and only won five seats versus Labor at something like 34% and 400 seats. It’s quite plausible that the next election sees a right wing coalition government led by Reform with the Tories a junior partner. Four years is quite a long time though.
If it could be accomplished via the ballot box that would if course be ideal, but if not then you need general strikes and mass street protests. I remember not long ago angry Britons were cutting down surveillance cameras and the like. You have to throw as many wrenches in the machinery as possible, but then the Machine gets violent and where does it go from there? I suppose the Brits could study the Western backed color revolutions and follow that playbook. However it works out the Majority must confront the Ruling Class directly and dictate terms. Otherwise the Ruling Class will just throw some bones to pacify the masses and continue to hold the reigns of power as always.
"your diarist — 90 percent negating esotericist who thinks it’s all ultimately demonic, but 10 percent thinking maybe there's more to it"
I'm probably 75% negating explorer who believes it *could* be ultimately demonic but in any case not benign, because no matter what it really is, we're being lied to. This tracks pretty closely with what I believe about AI as well.
If you have the time and the interest, I'd love to know why you land (mostly) in the "negating explorer" camp. (I say that with the caveat that I usually don't have time to get back into the comments after the first few hours. Especially today -- a dear friend is taking me out for my birthday, woo-hoo!)
Obviously they'd want to keep this secret, so psyops would be involved. I don't believe the UAP aspect is necessarily demonic, but I have no problem with the idea that the demons may have latched onto the thing for their own purposes, and may even be influencing certain actors to create a UAP "religion." If the state won't tell us what's really going on, any number of explanations will crop up, and some of these may be part of the psyop.
Basically, I'm in the camp that says that there could be something demonic at work here, but if so it has more to do with the interpretations of the phenomena than the phenomena themselves. I don't want to attribute it all directly/specifically to the demonic when the underlying phenomenon may be very much this-wordly.
Hope that makes sense!
And happy birthday! Hope you thoroughly enjoy your outing!
Happy birthday to you, Rod. And wow, I never thought I'd see the day when you'd refer to yourself as an esotericist in any context whatsoever. This is great! . . .
I agree with Rob, in part because demons aren't typically in the habit of putting on light shows in the skies for us. Rather, their modus operandi is largely how CS Lewis portrays it: deception and lies and subterfuge. That tracks with the hypothesis of a psyop. So I think there *is* something demonic here—in the ordinary sense of humans under demonic influence pursuing their own will-to-power and unholy ends. That's where the demonic is, and not in the demons themselves flying around the skies in spaceships they've magically built for that purpose.
To an extent, I think you've been so immersed in the UFO stuff that you're not maintaining perspective on just how eccentric and extravagant your theory is. There's a much simpler explanation that's also congruent with how demons most often influence and operate within our realm.
Redfern's book should be scrutinised; did he 'fact check' everything and run some interesting leads down? In that book you mention, 'Final Events', he references a larger two volume work that Redfern quotes. Does he still possess this? In a blog post a few years back, he mentioned more material that he wanted to publish, but could never find an interested publisher. Ch 23 is the main thing worth reading. There are true last names, prowords, crypts and acronyms, along with a mentioned facility acronym (PTC) a/w this 'Collins Elite'. Did he try to track these down? Did he ask for clarification from his three 'Collins Elite' sources? The 'Loftus Boat' sounds like a restaurant to me where an informal meeting might've happened, likely in proximity to an official location. He mischaracterises what "S&T" means on page 171. If this is not a fabrication, either by Redfern and/or these sources, then it means there's a non disclosed research entity in the govt. AATIP and its other names, formerly associated with that grifter Elizondo, are all publicly disclosed and therefore, not working on anything the govt. would consider valuable.
Happy birthday, Rod! Your reflection rejoices in changes in JD's life this past year. We rejoice in this year’s grace in your life!
Thank you for continuing to share much of value that you learn and discover. You point us to understanding, and to sources for us to think about for ourselves. Most of all, thanks for offering spiritual inspiration.
Two books written a long time ago about 20th century America that contain critiques even more relevant today than when they were written are these: 1)Theodore Roszak’s Where the Wasteland Ends: Politics and Transcendence in Postindustrial Society, and 2) Pitirim Sorokin’s The American Sex Revolution.
While these books draw their examples from events and developments at the time the books were written (Roszak’s 50 years ago, Sorokin’s 70 years ago), they are both uncanny in accurately capturing social and cultural trends in America that reached much more extreme forms in our own time.
Roszak’s was a popular historian (I think he was raised Roman Catholic and his critique of “postindustrial society” bears hints of the Catholic mystical tradition filtered through the visions of William
Blake and the British Romantic poets). Sorokin was the founding chairman of Harvard’s sociology department in the 1930s and a refugee from Lenin’s Russia.
Sorokin was very much influenced by Eastern Orthodox Christianity, and especially its deep mystical tradition. His book, The Ways and Powers of Love, is a scholarly gem and a magnificent compilation and explanation of the
greatest mystical writings on the nature of divine love.
I concur that just because a book is "old" does not at all mean it is not directly relevant to our time, (see "Brave New World," written in 1931). C.S. Lewis certainly saw the value in the perspectives of old books.
Happy Birthday, Rod. You're a young buck! I wish I was 58 again. As always, thanks for the wonderful pieces you write. Much food for thought. Cheers from Canada.
Rod, I appreciate your courage in even touching the subject of possible civil war in Britain. So I will be brave and say the two major parties there deserve civil war. By their treason of enabling the Invasion and suppressing political dissent against it, they are asking for it.
But I don't think they will get civil war because the English (I will stick to them as I know them better than the Welsh or Scots) have little willingness or courage to defend themselves. They once did. See WW2. But having lived amongst them, I see they don't now and haven't for some years. I've noted that before for those interested:
If AfD does well, and they will, and they are still shut out and ignored, the German elite will be asking for civil war, too. But I don't think they will get it either. But I don't know the Germans as well as I know the English.
BTW, we may not know how close we came to civil war in the U. S. If the Democrats decided to follow through and steal the 2024 Presidential election (They did steal a number of House and Senate seats.), I doubt we would have remained governable under an illegitimate President Harris. I think Democrats doubted that as well and also thought a 2024 big steal would not be credible. So they decided to undermine President Trump instead.
And I think most of us underestimate the evil they are capable of in so doing. God help us.
In 2020, when Democrats were threatening to kick most of the Republicans out of the House and bring in DC and Puerto Rico as states, I thought we were very, very close to massive chaos in the U.S. Thankfully, that didn't happen. I hope a strong leader emerges in Britain to spark major reform there.
I like ol' J.D. First of all, he's got initials for a name. Never met a fella called by initial's I didn't like, well, that wasn't a character from a TV show in a town full of yuppies south of the Red River.
Second, he was raised like a whole bunch of people not eligible for elite status. He just happened to find his way there, and I'm glad. Unlike most politicians, he knows what common soil feels like under his feet. I wish more did.
Honestly I think it's not totally unfair to describe what's happening in DC right now as a kind of civil war -- perhaps, as some have dubbed it, a "hybrid civil war".
Like the previous civil war, this one (which, unlike the previous one, won't be fought with guns) is about the meaning of the constitution. Specifically, whether there are, in fact, three branches of government, or four, in effect. I think it will be fascinating to watch the cases play out in light of the current lineup on the Supreme Court, to be honest -- it's probably the biggest opportunity the American right has had to reset the constitutional order since FDR remade it in the wake of his attempt to pack the Supreme Court in the 1930s.
Certainly the left understands the nature of the threat to their entire order on the governmental level -- the persistent "deep state" bureaucracy that is overwhelmingly left and perdures, unelected, in endless power regardless of election cycles.
The approach of Trump II really puts them in a bind, tactically. They can seek temporary injunctions as they have done, and it's easy enough to find sympathetic federal district court judges to issue them. But eventually those get before the Supreme Court (and if I'm AG Bondi, I do everything to make sure that happens sooner rather than later), and you see what happens. There won't be a more favorable court to roll those particular dice in, it seems to me, than this one, for the right -- and conversely, for the left, the idea of these kinds of 30k-foot constitutional issues going before this Supreme Court has to be utterly terrifying.
Environmental Protection Agency head Lee Zeldin has uncovered a $20 billion slush fund at Citibank that was used to funnel money to favored NGOs. Beautiful!
Well argued, Brendan. You're right this Supreme Court is about the best that can be expected to hear the cases that will come like mudslides. But though it's the best that can be expected, I'm still somewhat leery of where the chips will fall. We'll see.
Can we imagine this court, even its "originalists", actually wants to excise that fourth branch?
Roberts, at least, seems to prioritize the long-term credibility of the courts, so that's a good sign. It is indeed damaging to such credibility if any federal court in the nation can issue a transparently politically motivated injunction to prevent a president from fulfilling his democratic mandate.
The long term credibility of the Court can also not involve rubber stamping everything a president does. I've been a consistent critic of "rule by executive order", expressing approval when the Court struck done such things even in cases where I approved of the intent behind the order. Where Trump's EOs trespass beyond the bounds of the Constitution I want his struck down too. A return to constitutional government (including a reasonable amount of federalism) is vastly more important than anyone's fevered crusades du jour.
Your comment isn't applicable to the topic of Trump going after the federal bureaucracy within the executive branch, which is clearly within his constitutional purview.
I mostly agree with this-- but if Congress has specifically detailed that X$ must be spent on program Y, the weight of past precedent and the entire Anglo-American constitutional tradition dating back centuries gives the President no power to unilaterally cancel such programs.
However if Trump is simply trying to dredge the swamp of dubious behavior he'll have my approval.
Well, the executive also does have a lot of leeway and discretion with respect to what to prioritize or how exactly to go about executing the laws, which makes the stuff more interpretive and less binary.
As far as I know, most federal agencies weren't created by Congress; they were created by the executive branch, as a reasonable means of fulfilling what Congress had asked for. And such non-mandated means are fully open to radical revision.
Some things are flat out unconstitutional (like a president redefining the 14th Amendment by executive order) and will, I devoutly hope, be found as such by a 9-0 vote.
I think those born here are still being given citizenship. But Dershowitz had an interesting talk about this. Of course it is the "subject to the jurisdiction thereof" clause. I'd assumed this was children of diplomats, which it is. But illegal immigrants are supposed to be deported when they commit crimes - though we have the option to jail them -just as diplomats will be expelled if we feel they committed a serious crime. This is evidence that "subject to the jurisiction thereof" means that non-citizens do not qualify. Slaves were citizens. Interestiingly, Dershowitz also brought out that Native Americans were not citizens until 1924, nor, obviously, were their children born here.
So there is evidence for legally ending birthright citizenship using the words of the constitution.
Illegal immigrants are definitely subject to the jurisdiction of our laws. They can (and are) be orosecuted for crimes and sued in our courts for torts.
Native Americans ("not taxed") were specifically excluded in the text of the amendment. Nowadays they are citizens, by act of Congress, and of course they do pay federal taxes.
Clarence Thomas, who is an actual SCOTUS justice and a strict origibalist has opined in the past that this end run is counter to both the text and the understanding of it in 1867.
There is a valid (as in serious and substantive, whether or not you agree with it) originalist argument that Birthright citizenship as currently practiced is not what the drafters of the 14th amendment intended. What we have now is the result of a Supreme Court precedent (US v Wong Kim Ark) from thirty years after the amendment was ratified, and which could be overturned or modified by that same court.
The words of the amendment and yes as they were understood at the time, do not support that notion. And the president has no role in the matter. Congress can conceivably direct the court as to its jurisdiction (or propose a new Amendment) but the matter really does belong to the courts.
Like I said, there is substantive disagreement over what the words of the amendment mean in practice. As to that, you are correct that it’s a matter for the courts. The administration fully realizes that too - the EO is a vehicle to get this matter before said courts. You may think that it’s a risible method of getting it there, but it’s certainly going to accomplish exactly that.
As I say, it will be interesting to see what they do. It's almost certainly the best shot the right will get at going against the theory that underlies the entire fourth branch that it will likely ever have in history, so it makes sense to take the shot and see what happens.
My guess is that the Court will land somewhere in the middle, with greater executive oversight than these district courts are admitting, while not giving the WH carte blanche to do whatever it likes. Striking that balance in a new place may be challenging, but I expect it's more likely than leaving it "as is", particularly now that they've dispensed with Chevron deference.
And on the other track, it's also possible that the Court would address directly the long-standing issue of whether a federal district court has the ability to issue nationwide injunctions -- clarity on that (from this Court, likely in the negative) would, in itself, be immensely helpful.
Re: it's probably the biggest opportunity the American right has had to reset the constitutional order since FDR remade it in the wake of his attempt to pack the Supreme Court in the 1930s.
Except that the vast majority of people do not want to repeal the New Deal (the programs that survived, like Social Security most obviously). Anyone who thinks the Right should take this opportunity to turn the US into some sort of Ayn Rand Galt's Gulch will be rudely surprised when that plummets like a lead balloon. Donald Trump had some sense of that fact which is why in 2016 he disavowed such intentions. I sincerely hope he has no such hopes and is not misled by the world's richest man into territory that would wreck the MAGA movement for good.
"Anyone who thinks the Right should take this opportunity to turn the US into some sort of Ayn Rand Galt's Gulch will be rudely surprised when that plummets like a lead balloon."
At the moment anyone believing that this is the goal is probably overeacting.
Britain will not have a Civil War due to the fact that most Britons are passive and afraid of the police state. Most Britons have been indoctrinated into believing that Third World immigration is good and that white Britons, the historic Britons, deserve to lose its cultural history and be forced to be part of a multicultural Britain. For the few Britons who oppose replacement, Labour is more than happy to send the police to your front door, rubber truncheons in hand.
Britain's big problem is that the Conservative Party hasn't really conserved anything for decades. For many years and even in Margaret Thatcher's time, multiculturalism didn't seem much of a problem. But multiculturalism reared its ugly head by the 1990s yet the Conservatives not only ignored the problem but exacerbated it by supporting more immigration and more multiculturalism. The long line of Conservative failures at Prime Minister begins with David Cameron, snake to Theresa May, continue to Boris Johnson and finish with two lightweights, Liz Truss and Rishi Sunak, a man whose family business interests of billions are located in India and not Britain. At heart, Sunak isn't really English.
Labour, once the party for the white British working man, is now the party of multiculturalism and immigration. Labour desperately wants a cultural and racial demographic revolution because Labour has a stranglehold of the votes of the immigrants and their descendants and because deep down Labour hates the historic British nations- England, Wales, Scotland and Cornwall- and wants those nations destroyed just like the American Democrats want to destroy the historic American nation.
I would suggest to any Briton to move from the cities and the suburbs and move to rural areas which should remain British. Englishmen should move to Devon or Cumbria or Shropshire or Norfolk and live as historic Englishmen. Scots should move to the Highlands. For the Welsh, move to your northern rural areas and away from Cardiff.
Well, yes, the UK may eventually Balkanize the way former Yugoslavia, and especially Bosnia & Herzegovina are Balkanized. That did lead to war, though the Serb government was the proximate cause of the most destructive war. The people's there did live without outright war, but not without conflict, for hundreds of years before that. Tito's totalitarianism then held back conflict for decades, but that does not last, nor will Labour's soft totalitarianism.
I do not know, but I see Balkanization one possibility for the UK, though that could mean either civil war or uneasy (and not unbroken) peace of the type that the Balkans had for centuries.
It is rather easy to vote your interests at a voting booth. The government doesn't know who you voted for. But is the average Briton willing to get a cop's truncheon across his face or to be jailed for a year because he doesn't have the right beliefs? When I see a modern-day Wat Tyler leading 100,000 Englishmen into Parliament and ransacking it, then I think revolution might be in the air. But I think as long as Labour pays the old-age pensions, doles out medical care, pays the police and the British get to eat their share of fish and chips, roast beef and cucumber sandwiches, the average Briton will remain placid.
But Wat Tyler and all the other medieval revolts failed, bloodily. Likewise the Vendee and the Cristeros. I do agree that it would be easy to disrupt utilities, communications, etc that a technological society requires but the cultural war is unwinnable.
Bank when I used to drink I had a phase of intoxication I used to call "recitation drunk" when I would want to recite poetry and quotes. I was at that stage once with a British friend of mine and started quoted Shakespeare to him to see if her regonized it. even when I was getting to pretty well known lines like "Some are born great, some achieve greatness, others have greatness thrust upon them" he kept shaking his head and telling me "They don't teach us Shakespeare in school". He was in his mind 40s at the time and that was over 15 years ago.
It’d be hard to have a civil war as the population has essentially deprived of the right to keep & bear arms. Some time ago, a farmer in Norfolk (the UK one not the city in Virginia) was sentenced to several years in prison because he shot & wounded a robber who was trying to do him harm in his own house. So much for every man’s home is his castle. So they’d have to fight with rocks & bottles I suppose. Even kitchen knives are frowned on by the authorities.
Regarding J.D.'s getting to reenact the sticking it to the snooty sales clerk scene from "Pretty Woman" when he returns in triumph to Munich today, such moments in life are so satisfying to watch. We all love it when the underdog triumphs over those who shunned or mistreated him and you'd think it would make us all a bit more circumspect in our interactions with strangers.
Some people get it. My dad once told me a story of his wandering into a Jaguar dealership when he was in his early 20s to look at an E-type Jag up close. Said the salesman came up and treated him with respect even though he was obviously a college kid. The salesman told him "Look, I know you don't have money for one of these things right now... but you might someday." Bet the Eurotrash that have to kiss J.D.'s ass today wish that they'd been nicer last year.
As for our British cousins who may be on the brink of civil war:
Been awhile since I busted that one out. I do think that we will see massive, civilization changing violence in the streets of Europe before we see it here in America. It'll be The Troubles again, mostly.
No more Chief Wiggum? Every time I saw his pic on your handle I would think of his singing: "Fighting crime is not my cup of teaaaaaa" from the Shary Bobbins episode. All-time classic!
It's an AI image that I made that I call "Koala Noir" that I decided to use for awhile after yesterday's dust up in the comments over Rod using AI. Just a little subtle pot stirring.
There's a Ferrari dealership on Park Avenue, right across from the Chase building where Jamie works. I was at an appointment at the latter and decided to have a look at the cars (my son, who was about 12 at the time, was, is into cars). They couldn't have been nicer. A very attractive young lady of the Italian persuasion gave me a red Ferrari baseball cap for my boy.
I've been living in London for less than a year, and I find it very hard to judge how great the danger is of things getting worse. On the one hand, I live in a good neighbourhood and have had virtually no bad experiences, and there is no sense among the great majority of people that anything might go wrong. On the other hand, one does occasionally hear talk, for example from a woman I know whose husband is from northern Ireland. He apparently sees the writing on the wall, and speaks exactly like this Betz fellow.
Betz also mentions that Canada is not in a much better position, something I can well imagine, having seen not only the immense rise in housing (and other) costs there, which will make life hard for a population that, a mere decade ago, could expect real prosperity, but also the all-out attack by the liberal regime in Canada against Canadian identity and history (the one thing that might hold people together as prosperity disappears) - and this while cranking immigration to levels previously unimagined.
I will hold on to my US passport. I have a feeling I may be headed there before too long.
I lived in London suburbs (Pinner) for a wonderful year in 2007-2008. Have you yet seen the crowds after a football match? The crowds at Notting Hill Carnival? And sad to say, the protests from last summer that I saw filmed? Thoughts? Some of those participating in such things - vast swathes of people - can decide to rise up, with violence, I believe. That said, I personally think social media control and unjust jail sentences are keeping things in check for now. And the BBC has a much, much better hold on people than CNN ever did because, while it is propaganda now, and very concerning, it is not as extreme in its degree of propaganda as organizations such as CNN.
Note: I deplore censorship of opinion and wrongful jailing. That should stop no matter what it may or may not be holding back. (And yes, I need to, and will, listen to Perry's podcast on this subject).
"And the BBC has a much, much better hold on people than CNN ever did because, while it is propaganda now, and very concerning, it is not as extreme in its degree of propaganda as organizations such as CNN."
Well now, that's the problem, isn't it? Increasing polarization leads to propaganda as the sources of information become more partisan, finding truth in their own outlets and little of merit on the other side. Hence, OAN, Breitbart, and Fox News (before the libel suit) had definitive evidence the 2020 election was stolen. Meanwhile, CNN and other mainline news organizations had equally definitive evidence it was not. Now I imagine you might stretch the meaning of "definitive" to cover both sides, but in the world of evidence and facts there can only be one "definitive" truth. Until both sides can agree upon a common epistemology, one that separates facts from theory, truth from opinion, polarization will continue to divide and democracy - real democracy not the rhetorical kind - cannot exist in such an environment.
“Betz also mentions that Canada is not in a much better position, something I can well imagine, having seen not only the immense rise in housing (and other) costs there, which will make life hard for a population that, a mere decade ago, could expect real prosperity, but also the all-out attack by the liberal regime in Canada against Canadian identity an history (the one thing that might hold people together as prosperity disappears) - and this while cranking immigration to levels previously unimagined.”
Speaking as a Canadian I can personally see, alas, no major flaw in Betz’s analysis and assessment except that the roots of the cancerous process he describes far predate the current Liberal regime - going back to at least the 60’s. I would also not put the main blame on the Liberal Party but on the Canadian people, both English and French, a substantial majority of whom have supported the values of the Liberal Party and their “progressive” allies and kept them in power. I would not be surprised if, when our ruin is complete, the basic attitude of the Canadian people will be similar to that reflected in the riposte to Jeremiah of the exiled Jewish women, their nation destroyed, in Egypt (44: 15 - 19):
“Then all the men which knew that their wives had burned incense unto other gods, and all the women that stood by, a great multitude, even all the people that dwelt in the land of Egypt, in Pathros, answered Jeremiah, saying, “As for the word that thou hast spoken unto us in the name of the LORD, we will not hearken unto thee. But we will certainly do whatsoever thing goeth forth out of our own mouth, to burn incense unto the queen of heaven, and to pour out drink offerings unto her, as we have done, we, and our fathers, our kings, and our princes, in the cities of Judah, and in the streets of Jerusalem: for then had we plenty of victuals, and were well, and saw no evil. But since we left off to burn incense to the queen of heaven, and to pour out drink offerings unto her, we have wanted all things, and have been consumed by the sword and by the famine. And when we burned incense to the queen of heaven, and poured out drink offerings unto her, did we make her cakes to worship her, and pour out drink offerings unto her, without our men?”
I had read the Book of Jeremiah last year. That response that you quote was one of the more shocking things I had seen in Scripture in some time.
If, as Pinkoski writes there at one point, "Canada is a scam," how do Canadians unwind this state of affairs?
A friend and reader of this Substack, an English expat who lives here in Budapest, just shared this with me. The guy in the video is American, but, says my English friend, this is the best single explanation he has seen for why Britain is falling apart: https://www.youtube.com/watch?app=desktop&v=gWPJtXndRIE
Where's Johnny Rotten when you need him.
"No future, no future for you."
He's still out there, supporting Trump.
Here he is in 2023.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G61tL2jiWak&pp=ygUjcHVibGljIGltYWdlIGx0ZCBiZWluZyBzdHVwaWQgYWdhaW4%3D
Spot on!
He’s in California!
The UK imports 40% of its food.
Happy 58th! You’re exactly one year and one month younger than me.
Betz’s prognosis for Europe is especially grim because based on concrete metrics. I suspect most of us would include the US in this prognosis except that with populists at the helm we have at least a *chance* of pulling out of the identity spiral.
And the thing about Trump is—he’s obviously not the white supremacist the left claims. He’s a pragmatist. He doesn’t *care* about race.
This arguably makes our chances better. But here will be the heavy lifting: how are Trump’s supporters going to convince our left-adjacent midwit voters that Trump’s attacks on 1) the Blob and 2) DEI are not “white” attacks on black and brown Americans. Because at some point there will be pain, especially if Trump really sticks with tariffs. Our identity left, in disarray now, will certainly weaponize that pain. There's no way we can be confident come August there won't be another Summer of Floyd scenario playing out.
Still, compared to where we're at, western Europe really does seem screwed. I’m thinking especially the UK, France, Germany. But the US is going to need luck and persistence not to sink back into the same muck.
Yes, Happy 58th! You’re exactly one day older than I.
Happy birthday tomorrow!
And happy belated birthday last month!
Rod is or I am? I'm 59. But happy birthday, belated or otherwise!
Ah, sorry! Tomorrow is my birthday.
We’re in the ballpark no matter! Happy birthday!
Happy belated birthday to you!
Re: And the thing about Trump is—he’s obviously not the white supremacist the left claims. He’s a pragmatist.
I agree with your first sentence. On your second however I would change that to "He';s a misanthrope".
Based on the polls, Trump doesn't need more white supporters, as plenty of black and brown ones are coming over to his side.
Over 50% each of Hispanic and Asians voted democrat and 80% of blacks who did not stay home voted democrat. I couldn’t find definitive numbers regarding Indian but looks like 31% voted Trump. Interesting, I wonder how will those voters be kept on side?
Tiny secret - guess I should tell you Eric. It appears we share a birthday. Same month and day not the same year.
January 14th, yes? Not bad. We’re both stubborn Capricorns then.
Hahaha. Yes, on the date. But I completely deny being stubborn! :)
Mais bien sur. Moi aussi.
Non. (heh)
Oh, so *that's* why you all butt heads with each other like goats. Who says astrology isn't real? . . .
My Asian zodiac sign fits me to a "T" for the Year of the Mouse/Rat, (the Japanese word "nezumi" can mean either one).
I am the Dragon! (And in the Western system, I'm a Scorpio: sort of a larval dragon.)
Another Scorpio here, year of the Horse. But I’m glad I don’t believe in that stuff anymore, notwithstanding that God created the constellations and the Zodiak (in Hebrew, the Mazzaroth). Man put his own meaning on it and, voila, astrology.
We in the US also benefit from a long history of integrating immigrants, including from non-Anglophone cultures. The concept of American-ness, such as it is, is quite elastic. Multiracial marriages and births are also on the rise. I think most of the immigrant groups here now are quite open to identifying as American, and are not overly attached to the cultures of their home countries. Are they proud of where they came from? Sure. But they are not practicing separatism and generally intend to assimilate. They are authentically proud to be American. Are there exceptions this? Yes, I think so, but those groups are relatively small in number.
Europe is in a very different and much worse situation. Most of our immigrants are from the Americas and therefore come from Western or primarily Western traditions, being mostly Christian and speaking Western languages or Western based Creoles. Most of Europe’s on the other hand are… Not. And they are far more separatist and disinclined to assimilate, assuming their host cultures had good records of assimilating immigrants in the first place (which they mostly do not). They come from older and significantly more cohesive and xenophobic cultures than those in the Americas, almost all of which are essentially multiracial and multicultural themselves. They come to Europe for the money, not to assimilate, and have little but contempt for the societies taking them in.
Yes. It's largely true. Many of the 2nd-generation immigrants into the US in recent years have taken up the "anti-colonialist" left critique of America, but that's only those who ended up drinking the Kool-Aid in university. Which is still not many. And that still isn't the problem that Europe faces. You draw the distinction well.
We assimilated European migrants and strictly limited other groups until LBJ and his ‘guilt reforms’ of 1965. The populace has grown more divided with each successive generation. I don’t understand how people around my age seem to think it’s always been massively diverse; it simply never was except for pockets here and there. Our elections are now pretty much balanced on the edge of a knife. Even now the senate cannot afford to lose more than 3 votes. It was a decisive victory not a landslide. Europeans are in a better place because they are still a massive majority; all some clever person needs to do is rally them to action; while we will eventually become a minority even if the border is now slammed shut. There will be a prevailing culture; will it still be what our ancestors built and bled to bequeath us? I’m not as optimistic as either of you. Our fate was decided 60 years ago, Europe still has a chance if they can locate their spines.
Rod My Brother,
According to Google, the UK is still at least 75% White British (an undisputed majority). I don't believe that included Scots and the native population of Northern Ireland (both Protestant and Catholic). Add it all together you get at least 85% indigenous population of the UK. The UK doesn't need a Civil War. It needs a nationwide peasant uprising. It needs a commoner (working class urban and agrarian rural) led insurrection that brings Westminster to it's knees and forces the Ruling Class Elites to harken to the concerns of the majority...or else! The UK needs a revolution. Then when the indigenous majority of the UK holds the power then they can collectively decide what to do with its foreign colonizers that the Ruling Class Elites opened the gates wide open for. All of these foreigners have homelands. They all have nations of their own that they can return to. Where can the indigenous majority of the UK go? They can't go to India or Pakistan or Afghanistan or the Middle East, the Levant or the Maghreb. They can't go to Africa or Asia. I guess you could say they could go to the United States or Canada or Australia or New Zealand, but even those places are not their ancestral homeland. Their ancestral homeland England, Wales, Scotland and Ulster. They should never feel like foreigners in their own ancestral homeland. Call that fascism, call that nativism. Call that xenophobic. Call that what you will, but isn't it the truth? Everyone should feel safe and secure in their own ancestral homeland whether it's the Palestinians in Gaza or the West Bank, or American Indians in the United States, or the Irish Catholics who marched for Civil Rights in Derry and Belfast not long ago. Or Welsh miners who were sold out by Maggie Thatcher or working class Englishmen and women living in poverty while Westminster rolls out the Red Carpet for foreigners (who are economic migrants) who have nations of their own. England should look like English, Wales should look Welsh, Scotland should look Scottish. I mean could you imagine Pakistan looking English?
Betz says that a UK civil war would be the equivalent of a nationwide peasant uprising.
I think the Elites want to turn it into a Native British vs. Muslim conflict. If they can get Natives and Muslims to kill each other while they continue to rule, that's probably the goal. Divide and conquer. Or maybe they'll pretend to embrace the natives and throw them some scraps to pacify them but maintain control. The Ruling Class are the problem. Until they're violently yanked off of their high pedestals they'll continue to use and abuse the masses. Maybe that sounds Marxist. Maybe it is. Nothing's going to change if the Ruling Class Elites are allowed to keep their wealth and remain “Elite”. That's my problem with MAGA too. It's too Establishment Populist. Don't get me wrong it's better than the alternative, but maybe the MAGA victory was the American Ruling Class throwing a bone to the masses. To pacify us while they maintain their wealth, status and control and live another day so they can oppress us again.
”
Well... they've done it before.
Re: It needs a commoner (working class urban and agrarian rural) led insurrection that brings Westminster to it's knees and forces the Ruling Class Elites to harken to the concerns of the majority...or else!
If you mean that metaphorically, then I would agree. There should be a mass movement of such people to vote for a party or parties which promises to do something about the problems (the Reform UK party?)
Ahead of everyone in the polls now, though I’ve no idea how efficiently that vote is distributed. Last time they got 14% and only won five seats versus Labor at something like 34% and 400 seats. It’s quite plausible that the next election sees a right wing coalition government led by Reform with the Tories a junior partner. Four years is quite a long time though.
If it could be accomplished via the ballot box that would if course be ideal, but if not then you need general strikes and mass street protests. I remember not long ago angry Britons were cutting down surveillance cameras and the like. You have to throw as many wrenches in the machinery as possible, but then the Machine gets violent and where does it go from there? I suppose the Brits could study the Western backed color revolutions and follow that playbook. However it works out the Majority must confront the Ruling Class directly and dictate terms. Otherwise the Ruling Class will just throw some bones to pacify the masses and continue to hold the reigns of power as always.
"your diarist — 90 percent negating esotericist who thinks it’s all ultimately demonic, but 10 percent thinking maybe there's more to it"
I'm probably 75% negating explorer who believes it *could* be ultimately demonic but in any case not benign, because no matter what it really is, we're being lied to. This tracks pretty closely with what I believe about AI as well.
If you have the time and the interest, I'd love to know why you land (mostly) in the "negating explorer" camp. (I say that with the caveat that I usually don't have time to get back into the comments after the first few hours. Especially today -- a dear friend is taking me out for my birthday, woo-hoo!)
I think that what's probably going on is government experimentation with something like this:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lightcraft
Obviously they'd want to keep this secret, so psyops would be involved. I don't believe the UAP aspect is necessarily demonic, but I have no problem with the idea that the demons may have latched onto the thing for their own purposes, and may even be influencing certain actors to create a UAP "religion." If the state won't tell us what's really going on, any number of explanations will crop up, and some of these may be part of the psyop.
Basically, I'm in the camp that says that there could be something demonic at work here, but if so it has more to do with the interpretations of the phenomena than the phenomena themselves. I don't want to attribute it all directly/specifically to the demonic when the underlying phenomenon may be very much this-wordly.
Hope that makes sense!
And happy birthday! Hope you thoroughly enjoy your outing!
Happy birthday to you, Rod. And wow, I never thought I'd see the day when you'd refer to yourself as an esotericist in any context whatsoever. This is great! . . .
I agree with Rob, in part because demons aren't typically in the habit of putting on light shows in the skies for us. Rather, their modus operandi is largely how CS Lewis portrays it: deception and lies and subterfuge. That tracks with the hypothesis of a psyop. So I think there *is* something demonic here—in the ordinary sense of humans under demonic influence pursuing their own will-to-power and unholy ends. That's where the demonic is, and not in the demons themselves flying around the skies in spaceships they've magically built for that purpose.
To an extent, I think you've been so immersed in the UFO stuff that you're not maintaining perspective on just how eccentric and extravagant your theory is. There's a much simpler explanation that's also congruent with how demons most often influence and operate within our realm.
If you haven’t, check out Jacques Vallee take on the UAP stuff. This UAP, weird beings thing goes much farther back than the 1940’s
Have the best time with I-think-I-know-who, and convey my greetings!
Redfern's book should be scrutinised; did he 'fact check' everything and run some interesting leads down? In that book you mention, 'Final Events', he references a larger two volume work that Redfern quotes. Does he still possess this? In a blog post a few years back, he mentioned more material that he wanted to publish, but could never find an interested publisher. Ch 23 is the main thing worth reading. There are true last names, prowords, crypts and acronyms, along with a mentioned facility acronym (PTC) a/w this 'Collins Elite'. Did he try to track these down? Did he ask for clarification from his three 'Collins Elite' sources? The 'Loftus Boat' sounds like a restaurant to me where an informal meeting might've happened, likely in proximity to an official location. He mischaracterises what "S&T" means on page 171. If this is not a fabrication, either by Redfern and/or these sources, then it means there's a non disclosed research entity in the govt. AATIP and its other names, formerly associated with that grifter Elizondo, are all publicly disclosed and therefore, not working on anything the govt. would consider valuable.
Happy birthday, Rod! Your reflection rejoices in changes in JD's life this past year. We rejoice in this year’s grace in your life!
Thank you for continuing to share much of value that you learn and discover. You point us to understanding, and to sources for us to think about for ourselves. Most of all, thanks for offering spiritual inspiration.
Happy birthday Rod!
Happy Birthday and thank you for your work!
Two books written a long time ago about 20th century America that contain critiques even more relevant today than when they were written are these: 1)Theodore Roszak’s Where the Wasteland Ends: Politics and Transcendence in Postindustrial Society, and 2) Pitirim Sorokin’s The American Sex Revolution.
While these books draw their examples from events and developments at the time the books were written (Roszak’s 50 years ago, Sorokin’s 70 years ago), they are both uncanny in accurately capturing social and cultural trends in America that reached much more extreme forms in our own time.
Roszak’s was a popular historian (I think he was raised Roman Catholic and his critique of “postindustrial society” bears hints of the Catholic mystical tradition filtered through the visions of William
Blake and the British Romantic poets). Sorokin was the founding chairman of Harvard’s sociology department in the 1930s and a refugee from Lenin’s Russia.
Sorokin was very much influenced by Eastern Orthodox Christianity, and especially its deep mystical tradition. His book, The Ways and Powers of Love, is a scholarly gem and a magnificent compilation and explanation of the
greatest mystical writings on the nature of divine love.
Russ Nieli
I concur that just because a book is "old" does not at all mean it is not directly relevant to our time, (see "Brave New World," written in 1931). C.S. Lewis certainly saw the value in the perspectives of old books.
Happy Birthday, Rod. You're a young buck! I wish I was 58 again. As always, thanks for the wonderful pieces you write. Much food for thought. Cheers from Canada.
Rod, I appreciate your courage in even touching the subject of possible civil war in Britain. So I will be brave and say the two major parties there deserve civil war. By their treason of enabling the Invasion and suppressing political dissent against it, they are asking for it.
But I don't think they will get civil war because the English (I will stick to them as I know them better than the Welsh or Scots) have little willingness or courage to defend themselves. They once did. See WW2. But having lived amongst them, I see they don't now and haven't for some years. I've noted that before for those interested:
https://markmarshall.substack.com/p/grooming-gangs-and-englands-unwillingness
If AfD does well, and they will, and they are still shut out and ignored, the German elite will be asking for civil war, too. But I don't think they will get it either. But I don't know the Germans as well as I know the English.
BTW, we may not know how close we came to civil war in the U. S. If the Democrats decided to follow through and steal the 2024 Presidential election (They did steal a number of House and Senate seats.), I doubt we would have remained governable under an illegitimate President Harris. I think Democrats doubted that as well and also thought a 2024 big steal would not be credible. So they decided to undermine President Trump instead.
And I think most of us underestimate the evil they are capable of in so doing. God help us.
In 2020, when Democrats were threatening to kick most of the Republicans out of the House and bring in DC and Puerto Rico as states, I thought we were very, very close to massive chaos in the U.S. Thankfully, that didn't happen. I hope a strong leader emerges in Britain to spark major reform there.
I like ol' J.D. First of all, he's got initials for a name. Never met a fella called by initial's I didn't like, well, that wasn't a character from a TV show in a town full of yuppies south of the Red River.
Second, he was raised like a whole bunch of people not eligible for elite status. He just happened to find his way there, and I'm glad. Unlike most politicians, he knows what common soil feels like under his feet. I wish more did.
Honestly I think it's not totally unfair to describe what's happening in DC right now as a kind of civil war -- perhaps, as some have dubbed it, a "hybrid civil war".
Like the previous civil war, this one (which, unlike the previous one, won't be fought with guns) is about the meaning of the constitution. Specifically, whether there are, in fact, three branches of government, or four, in effect. I think it will be fascinating to watch the cases play out in light of the current lineup on the Supreme Court, to be honest -- it's probably the biggest opportunity the American right has had to reset the constitutional order since FDR remade it in the wake of his attempt to pack the Supreme Court in the 1930s.
Certainly the left understands the nature of the threat to their entire order on the governmental level -- the persistent "deep state" bureaucracy that is overwhelmingly left and perdures, unelected, in endless power regardless of election cycles.
The approach of Trump II really puts them in a bind, tactically. They can seek temporary injunctions as they have done, and it's easy enough to find sympathetic federal district court judges to issue them. But eventually those get before the Supreme Court (and if I'm AG Bondi, I do everything to make sure that happens sooner rather than later), and you see what happens. There won't be a more favorable court to roll those particular dice in, it seems to me, than this one, for the right -- and conversely, for the left, the idea of these kinds of 30k-foot constitutional issues going before this Supreme Court has to be utterly terrifying.
The Trump Administration fired 200,000 probationary government workers yesterday. How splendid.
Isn't it liberating to discover that we can just do things?
Environmental Protection Agency head Lee Zeldin has uncovered a $20 billion slush fund at Citibank that was used to funnel money to favored NGOs. Beautiful!
Well argued, Brendan. You're right this Supreme Court is about the best that can be expected to hear the cases that will come like mudslides. But though it's the best that can be expected, I'm still somewhat leery of where the chips will fall. We'll see.
Can we imagine this court, even its "originalists", actually wants to excise that fourth branch?
Roberts, at least, seems to prioritize the long-term credibility of the courts, so that's a good sign. It is indeed damaging to such credibility if any federal court in the nation can issue a transparently politically motivated injunction to prevent a president from fulfilling his democratic mandate.
The long term credibility of the Court can also not involve rubber stamping everything a president does. I've been a consistent critic of "rule by executive order", expressing approval when the Court struck done such things even in cases where I approved of the intent behind the order. Where Trump's EOs trespass beyond the bounds of the Constitution I want his struck down too. A return to constitutional government (including a reasonable amount of federalism) is vastly more important than anyone's fevered crusades du jour.
Your comment isn't applicable to the topic of Trump going after the federal bureaucracy within the executive branch, which is clearly within his constitutional purview.
I mostly agree with this-- but if Congress has specifically detailed that X$ must be spent on program Y, the weight of past precedent and the entire Anglo-American constitutional tradition dating back centuries gives the President no power to unilaterally cancel such programs.
However if Trump is simply trying to dredge the swamp of dubious behavior he'll have my approval.
Well, the executive also does have a lot of leeway and discretion with respect to what to prioritize or how exactly to go about executing the laws, which makes the stuff more interpretive and less binary.
As far as I know, most federal agencies weren't created by Congress; they were created by the executive branch, as a reasonable means of fulfilling what Congress had asked for. And such non-mandated means are fully open to radical revision.
Some things are flat out unconstitutional (like a president redefining the 14th Amendment by executive order) and will, I devoutly hope, be found as such by a 9-0 vote.
I think those born here are still being given citizenship. But Dershowitz had an interesting talk about this. Of course it is the "subject to the jurisdiction thereof" clause. I'd assumed this was children of diplomats, which it is. But illegal immigrants are supposed to be deported when they commit crimes - though we have the option to jail them -just as diplomats will be expelled if we feel they committed a serious crime. This is evidence that "subject to the jurisiction thereof" means that non-citizens do not qualify. Slaves were citizens. Interestiingly, Dershowitz also brought out that Native Americans were not citizens until 1924, nor, obviously, were their children born here.
So there is evidence for legally ending birthright citizenship using the words of the constitution.
Illegal immigrants are definitely subject to the jurisdiction of our laws. They can (and are) be orosecuted for crimes and sued in our courts for torts.
Native Americans ("not taxed") were specifically excluded in the text of the amendment. Nowadays they are citizens, by act of Congress, and of course they do pay federal taxes.
Argie with Dershowitz, our greatest law professor. "Definitely" - no, not one way or the other. He explained why it arguable.
Clarence Thomas, who is an actual SCOTUS justice and a strict origibalist has opined in the past that this end run is counter to both the text and the understanding of it in 1867.
There is a valid (as in serious and substantive, whether or not you agree with it) originalist argument that Birthright citizenship as currently practiced is not what the drafters of the 14th amendment intended. What we have now is the result of a Supreme Court precedent (US v Wong Kim Ark) from thirty years after the amendment was ratified, and which could be overturned or modified by that same court.
The words of the amendment and yes as they were understood at the time, do not support that notion. And the president has no role in the matter. Congress can conceivably direct the court as to its jurisdiction (or propose a new Amendment) but the matter really does belong to the courts.
Like I said, there is substantive disagreement over what the words of the amendment mean in practice. As to that, you are correct that it’s a matter for the courts. The administration fully realizes that too - the EO is a vehicle to get this matter before said courts. You may think that it’s a risible method of getting it there, but it’s certainly going to accomplish exactly that.
It's illegitimate from the get go. This would be Congress' job.
As I say, it will be interesting to see what they do. It's almost certainly the best shot the right will get at going against the theory that underlies the entire fourth branch that it will likely ever have in history, so it makes sense to take the shot and see what happens.
My guess is that the Court will land somewhere in the middle, with greater executive oversight than these district courts are admitting, while not giving the WH carte blanche to do whatever it likes. Striking that balance in a new place may be challenging, but I expect it's more likely than leaving it "as is", particularly now that they've dispensed with Chevron deference.
And on the other track, it's also possible that the Court would address directly the long-standing issue of whether a federal district court has the ability to issue nationwide injunctions -- clarity on that (from this Court, likely in the negative) would, in itself, be immensely helpful.
Agreed. I think we’ll end with some moderate wins for the Constitution. Which we’ll be happy to take.
Re: it's probably the biggest opportunity the American right has had to reset the constitutional order since FDR remade it in the wake of his attempt to pack the Supreme Court in the 1930s.
Except that the vast majority of people do not want to repeal the New Deal (the programs that survived, like Social Security most obviously). Anyone who thinks the Right should take this opportunity to turn the US into some sort of Ayn Rand Galt's Gulch will be rudely surprised when that plummets like a lead balloon. Donald Trump had some sense of that fact which is why in 2016 he disavowed such intentions. I sincerely hope he has no such hopes and is not misled by the world's richest man into territory that would wreck the MAGA movement for good.
"Anyone who thinks the Right should take this opportunity to turn the US into some sort of Ayn Rand Galt's Gulch will be rudely surprised when that plummets like a lead balloon."
At the moment anyone believing that this is the goal is probably overeacting.
Wishing you a happy birthday and a wonderful year ahead.
Britain will not have a Civil War due to the fact that most Britons are passive and afraid of the police state. Most Britons have been indoctrinated into believing that Third World immigration is good and that white Britons, the historic Britons, deserve to lose its cultural history and be forced to be part of a multicultural Britain. For the few Britons who oppose replacement, Labour is more than happy to send the police to your front door, rubber truncheons in hand.
Britain's big problem is that the Conservative Party hasn't really conserved anything for decades. For many years and even in Margaret Thatcher's time, multiculturalism didn't seem much of a problem. But multiculturalism reared its ugly head by the 1990s yet the Conservatives not only ignored the problem but exacerbated it by supporting more immigration and more multiculturalism. The long line of Conservative failures at Prime Minister begins with David Cameron, snake to Theresa May, continue to Boris Johnson and finish with two lightweights, Liz Truss and Rishi Sunak, a man whose family business interests of billions are located in India and not Britain. At heart, Sunak isn't really English.
Labour, once the party for the white British working man, is now the party of multiculturalism and immigration. Labour desperately wants a cultural and racial demographic revolution because Labour has a stranglehold of the votes of the immigrants and their descendants and because deep down Labour hates the historic British nations- England, Wales, Scotland and Cornwall- and wants those nations destroyed just like the American Democrats want to destroy the historic American nation.
I would suggest to any Briton to move from the cities and the suburbs and move to rural areas which should remain British. Englishmen should move to Devon or Cumbria or Shropshire or Norfolk and live as historic Englishmen. Scots should move to the Highlands. For the Welsh, move to your northern rural areas and away from Cardiff.
Well, yes, the UK may eventually Balkanize the way former Yugoslavia, and especially Bosnia & Herzegovina are Balkanized. That did lead to war, though the Serb government was the proximate cause of the most destructive war. The people's there did live without outright war, but not without conflict, for hundreds of years before that. Tito's totalitarianism then held back conflict for decades, but that does not last, nor will Labour's soft totalitarianism.
I do not know, but I see Balkanization one possibility for the UK, though that could mean either civil war or uneasy (and not unbroken) peace of the type that the Balkans had for centuries.
They voted for Brexit. I don't think they are as passive as you believe. Or as passive as they seem to, are destined to remain so.
It is rather easy to vote your interests at a voting booth. The government doesn't know who you voted for. But is the average Briton willing to get a cop's truncheon across his face or to be jailed for a year because he doesn't have the right beliefs? When I see a modern-day Wat Tyler leading 100,000 Englishmen into Parliament and ransacking it, then I think revolution might be in the air. But I think as long as Labour pays the old-age pensions, doles out medical care, pays the police and the British get to eat their share of fish and chips, roast beef and cucumber sandwiches, the average Briton will remain placid.
Time, as always, will tell. But history shows they have a boiling point.
I hope you are right.
But Wat Tyler and all the other medieval revolts failed, bloodily. Likewise the Vendee and the Cristeros. I do agree that it would be easy to disrupt utilities, communications, etc that a technological society requires but the cultural war is unwinnable.
Sure. When the mayor of London, William Walworth, thrust his sword into Tyler, the rebellion pretty much ended.
Bank when I used to drink I had a phase of intoxication I used to call "recitation drunk" when I would want to recite poetry and quotes. I was at that stage once with a British friend of mine and started quoted Shakespeare to him to see if her regonized it. even when I was getting to pretty well known lines like "Some are born great, some achieve greatness, others have greatness thrust upon them" he kept shaking his head and telling me "They don't teach us Shakespeare in school". He was in his mind 40s at the time and that was over 15 years ago.
I remember someone once said -- Orwell? Joe Strummer? -- that the Brits once called for a revolution but it rained that day so no one showed up.
It’d be hard to have a civil war as the population has essentially deprived of the right to keep & bear arms. Some time ago, a farmer in Norfolk (the UK one not the city in Virginia) was sentenced to several years in prison because he shot & wounded a robber who was trying to do him harm in his own house. So much for every man’s home is his castle. So they’d have to fight with rocks & bottles I suppose. Even kitchen knives are frowned on by the authorities.
Happy Birthday.
Regarding J.D.'s getting to reenact the sticking it to the snooty sales clerk scene from "Pretty Woman" when he returns in triumph to Munich today, such moments in life are so satisfying to watch. We all love it when the underdog triumphs over those who shunned or mistreated him and you'd think it would make us all a bit more circumspect in our interactions with strangers.
Some people get it. My dad once told me a story of his wandering into a Jaguar dealership when he was in his early 20s to look at an E-type Jag up close. Said the salesman came up and treated him with respect even though he was obviously a college kid. The salesman told him "Look, I know you don't have money for one of these things right now... but you might someday." Bet the Eurotrash that have to kiss J.D.'s ass today wish that they'd been nicer last year.
As for our British cousins who may be on the brink of civil war:
https://youtu.be/xD0E_Gj9xMk?si=ewCnlzvHsuH2HNAP
Been awhile since I busted that one out. I do think that we will see massive, civilization changing violence in the streets of Europe before we see it here in America. It'll be The Troubles again, mostly.
No more Chief Wiggum? Every time I saw his pic on your handle I would think of his singing: "Fighting crime is not my cup of teaaaaaa" from the Shary Bobbins episode. All-time classic!
It's an AI image that I made that I call "Koala Noir" that I decided to use for awhile after yesterday's dust up in the comments over Rod using AI. Just a little subtle pot stirring.
There's a Ferrari dealership on Park Avenue, right across from the Chase building where Jamie works. I was at an appointment at the latter and decided to have a look at the cars (my son, who was about 12 at the time, was, is into cars). They couldn't have been nicer. A very attractive young lady of the Italian persuasion gave me a red Ferrari baseball cap for my boy.