Populism And The Jabberwock

The word "toke" entered the American drug culture slang in the 1950s.  It is derived from the Spanish word "toque", which means "torch".  Not that this has much to do with anything, except that the original Texas Cowhippie, Willie Nelson, got dizzy and had to cancel a concert.  Now, if Willie feels "dizzy", you know it was good stuff.

We know you stop by from time to time, so here's sending you good vibes, Bubba Willie.  Hope it passes fast.

And now for something completely different:

One of our long-running themes here on the Far Side is that Systems cannot be reformed from the inside.  They must be completely disassembled and replaced.  Just like Sir Ralph Richardson's Supreme Being warns us in the brilliant Time Bandits, "Do be careful! Don't lose any of that stuff. That's concentrated evil. One drop of that could turn you all into hermit crabs."

As is always the case, the people rise up in revolt, send in their champion, who then gets consumed by the dragon while folks back home relax, figuring they got it all worked out.  Little do they suspect that the proverbial Jabberwock has completely consumed their champion and is now more powerful than ever.

Yes, we've all been trained that we can nominate a "representative" to fight our wars for us, and thus, having sent our hero off to battle, we can return to the hearth and clank our mugs of grog in toast of our cleverness.

Meanwhile, the Jabberwock picks its teeth after such a fine meal of human offering with the rib bones of our hopes and dreams.  Because the forces of Good are complacent and don't understand the nature of the beast they fight, the forces of Evil prevail.

In the now traditional 100 days of a new president, we have seen Donald Trump swing virtually 180 degrees from his campaign rhetoric.  This has got to be one of the fastest and most complete reversals on the books.  From continuing the "refugee" imports, to health care "reform" to standing down from empire building to prosecuting the Clintons, not one single promise remains standing.

NAFTA, TTIP and the Paris Accords are now negotiable.  PizzaGate has virtually disappeared off the RADAR.  North Korea has now been added to military adventurism.  Obamacare reform is now a distant memory.  The border wall is a political poker chip.  And the nepotistic sycophants' chorus of "Go Daddy Go!" are the only voices heard in the halls of power.

Trump was pushed by the System to both absorb and deflect the voices of reform, and to drive "reasonable" people into the Hillary camp.  It is safe to say the Establishment had no idea how deep the reformist movement was and were shocked their darling candidate lost, but it has hardly slowed their progress.  The System simply regrouped, applied the necessary pressure to block circulation in the appropriate places, and quickly absorbed the new reality into its own corruption.

Trump supporters are not without blame.  Having first bought the fairy tale that a billionaire New York real estate elitist could EVER be a champion of the little folk, they promptly went back to sleep after the inauguration thinking they had done their job to stop the onslaught of centuries of corruption and deception.

This effect is a combination of a lifetime of indoctrination, and a personal failure to recognize it and overcome it.

Overseas we see the same effect.  Theresa May, selected champion of the Brexit effort, has sold out to the Dark Side, calling snap elections to give the System another shot at reversing the movement, which it will.

In France, Marine Le Pen has moved relentlessly towards the Statist position in order to curry favor from the System.  If elected, she too will wait for low tide before subsuming the Populist Wave into the System.

The problem that no one seems to get, even after glorious revolutions like America, France and both Russian versions, is that there is an underlying assumption that is Evil itself - the heart of the System.  As in Time Bandits, a single piece of Evil keeps getting left behind to continue the domination of Humanity.

The crumb of Evil that is the System is the stubborn assumption that we need a System of any kind.  Despite thousands of years of history and uncountable millions of lives lost, we still refuse to realize that it is the concentration of power that is the problem - government itself.

We are trained from birth to think that anarchy is chaos and that civilization would collapse without "leaders" and "laws".  Do we really need stone tablets to tell us that stealing, lying and killing are wrong?  These things are built into our very cells.  All the law can do is make us accept things we would not normally accept, and back it up with the threat of death and/or incarceration to ensure our compliance.

The basis for government is religion.  The belief that any one person or group can have a hotline to God and get special messages that the rest of us somehow miss means that we are primed to accept domination by someone else.  These "leaders" use special effects and wizardry to make us think they have been granted god-like powers, but they are just toys that any of us could make and deploy.

But we choose to cower and tell ourselves that God has ordained these "leaders" and "authorities" to lord over us poor, degenerate sinners.  We accept the premise that we are immoral and flawed creatures that need to be herded, or all Hell will break loose.  We refuse to see that all Hell IS the System that we allow over us.

Until and unless we can final conquer the Evil that is of our own making, we are doomed to repeat the same error again and again.  We will never cast off the yoke of servitude until we realize both that we are servants and who the Master really is.

We humans continue to think that by hiring our own Masters, we will end slavery.  The nonsensical and unreasonable logic is pounded into our minds from birth.  It is our fear and our laziness that perpetuates our misery.

We cannot modify the System to be benign.  The System is designed to redirect whatever force we throw at it back at us twenty-fold.  The more powerful our fight against it becomes, the more we will be subjugated by it.  It is the Third Law of Motion - every action begets equal and opposite reaction - that is dominating us.  Simply put, it is the denial of Nature that is defeating us.

The proper question is not how we can modify the System to work for us, but why we keep leaving bits of Evil behind when we try to reform it.

All the Putins and Trumps and Mays and Le Pens will never fix the problem, they will always become a part of it.  The only viable solution to our slavery is the utter destruction of centralized power and all its tentacles.

Short of that, the best we can hope for is fur-lined shackles.

The Storm Approacheth

Woohoo!  Brexit!  The masses stood up to be counted!  We won!

Yeah, yeah, yeah.  Sorry, folks.  This was the first shot in a battle that is far from over.  If anything, we haven't even begun.  A non-binding plebiscite on independence does not an independent country make.

Paul Craig Roberts nailed it head-on.  Now the real fight begins, and frankly, given the track record of humanity, I hold very little hope that the slim majority shown in the vote will have the stomach for a real fight.  It's one thing to tell the bully, "Leave me alone," it's another altogether to make him.

If the readers here actually believe that a simple vote will cause the elite to just roll over and start the decade-long process of unwinding all the legal and diplomatic webs they have built, then the dear reader is far more naïve than I had hoped.

What the Brexit election was is a means to identify who was against the elite, a survey if you will.  It was akin to one of George III agents going to a tavern in New England in 1774, and yelling "Death to the King," and noting every face who cheered.

No, no, no.  The fun has only begun.

Let me tell you about Brexit.

Get six million people in a room.  Tell them, "Who wants to have a one-week luxury vacation on the Moon?"

The room goes nuts, with 52% of the folks whooping and hollering, while 48% moan and walk out.

"Great!  Now that we are down to the hardcores, I need you to donate $50 billion, and spend the next 10 years working really hard to build the resort at Tycho crater!"  Most of the remaining crowd moans and walks out.

You address the four folks still sitting in the front row.  "OK, now the true believers are here.  I will warn you that our opponents will do everything from ridicule us to sabotaging everything we do."

Suddenly, you are preaching to a room full of crickets.

That's Brexit, folks.

When it comes to the nut-cuttin', as we say on the farm, the reality sets in and we find out just how much people want freedom.  If I've said it once, I've said it a hundred times: people are too comfortable now to really work for liberty.

The elite have already shown what they can and will do to ensure Brexit doesn't happen.  They will crash the Pound Sterling, they will withdraw funding from companies and public works projects and everything in between.  They will turn the media against it.  They will trot out the diplomatic corps to negotiate every possible compromise.  And if you are still sitting there after all that, they will destroy your comfortable life and take away your toys and probably your families, and then they will try to commit you to an insane asylum.  And I mean this very literally.  I have been through it.

If you really think you are committed to Brexit, or any other similar campaign, you ain't seen nothing yet.  Brace yourself.

Look, these elite have spent centuries (at least since the 1600s) building their little global paradise.  There is no way in God's Green Shit Hole they are going to give it all up over a single, simple vote.

If you are a supporter, or God help you, actually committed to this fight, you better get ready.  It will escalate to levels you can't even imagine.  You will be forced to spend yourself into the poor house, while at the same time fighting at every turn.  It will come at you from every angle.  The worst of it will come when you think you've won and it gets rather quiet.  Just as you think you can start re-building, that's when the hammer will fall and the worst of it will come.

People are not prepared for these things.  They have been instilled with this image of democracy as being something where they just vote and it happens.  Folks aren't entirely to blame, since the propaganda has been hot and heavy in their faces since birth.  The fact is, voting means nothing.  Never has.  It's the battle that comes after the vote that counts.

If the effort goes much beyond a few after-vote parties, here's what will happen:

1. Stock markets and currencies will start tanking;
2. Public services will stop working (probably famous Labour Strikes);
3. Banks will start foreclosing on mortgages;
4. Savings and pension funds will vanish;
5. Media will demonize and ridicule the movement;
6. Dozens of "reasonable" compromises will be offered;
7. And if all that doesn't stop it, they will just shoot and incarcerate you.

They will get away with all this because they own the "legal" system and the media and the markets.  They can enrich you or impoverish you at a whim, and it won't touch their net worth.  No one will dare stand with you because the attention of the PTB might turn on them next.

When they are done, you will be, at the very best, a lunatic crank, and at the worst a dangerous terrorist, and nothing you do will change that, because folks watch TeeVee and are told who and what you are, and no one will believe anything you say to the contrary.

Are you, dear Brexit supporter, ready for this?  Do you think you can withstand that kind of onslaught?  You had better be prepared, because the more success you have, the more this pressure will come to bear, until you are living in squalor scratching for food.

If you can withstand it, if you make it through all of this, then the reward will be generations of liberty and freedom, not for you, but for those who follow.  Most folks today don't care about the future, they want their rewards now.  Because of that societal narcissism, movements like Brexit always fail.  Honestly, who cares about their great-grandchildren?  Especially when we can eat, drink and be merry right now!  Their world is their problem.  We don't want to suffer for them!

Yes, let us celebrate Brexit and the power of the people.  Let us party like it's 1776.  Let us slap each other on the back and congratulate ourselves on how clever we are.  The worst is yet to come.

I'm not a pessimist.  I truly hope that the Brits will follow through, and that many others will rise up, as well.  But I have been through the worst of it and seen what can and will be done to ensure the elite win.  It is not pretty.

Revolutions are easy to start and nearly impossible to win, especially in an age of narcissism and global media, when your toys can be taken away with the flip of a switch, and you can become a demon overnight with almost no chance to change it, and the you life and those of people you love and care about are nothing more than tools to destroy you.

This may all sound rather bleak, and it is, but it is what people face if they really want Brexit.

I may be completely wrong and the whole thing will just sail on through, but is it better to prepare for the storm and get sunshine, or the other way around?

Joke-Xit

Ever have one of those days, that becomes one of those weeks, and turns out to be one of those months?

I have.  I call it June 2016.

Must be the "strawberry Moon" or something.

Before I start bitching, might as well tell all our good readers in the Northern Hemisphere happy summer.  And to all you good folks in the Southern Hemisphere, happy winter!  And to all us folks living on the equator, happy more of the same ole stuff.

Yesterday started with a call to meet my agent at the immigration office to get my annual mug shots and fingerprints done.  By the time I wended my way through Jakarta traffic to get there, a branch had fallen and severed the data line and the whole damn system was offline.

Great.  So bundle up and head cross town to the office only to get there in the nick of time to run out again on a series of meetings.  No coffee or nuttin'.

Today, I get a desperate call at 8am to go to the immigration office again.  So, you know the drill.  Anyway, I get there and have to sit for an hour waiting to get my vitals done.  At least there was a fan next to me.

Get to the office after heroic battle with Jakarta traffic, only to find out everyone is out sick or something today.  So, joy.  I can get some real work done, except that the person operating the background music in the office hit the wrong cue, so I have to listen to Christmas carols all day, I suppose.

Ah, Life on the Far Side.  Ain't it grand?  But, as Marty Feldman said in Young Frankenstein, "Could be worse.  Could be raining."  Of course, this is the tropics and it may start the deluge at any moment.

Anyway, don't want to bore you with all my happiness and love.  I want to bore you with politics and grousing about the way things are.  After all, that's why you come here, right?

So any way...

They killed Jo Cox in the UK so that everyone would think it was the Pro-Brexit gang and would turn on them, which they all did on cue.  Those PTB bastards sure know how to play the game.  Shame more people don't see it.  If you haven't figured it out by now, there is no way in God's Green Hell they are going to let the UK out of the EU.  Just a fact.  Get used to it.

Just like there is no way on God's Green Slimeball that Trump will ever get elected.  Just a fact.  Get used to it.

They will do anything to protect their precious little empire, and for all the noise and bluster, folks will just knuckle under and take it in the back door without WD-40, because that's the way people are.  And that's the way this game is played.

Folks get all riled up and ready to change things, then one little hiccup and the whole thing comes crashing down and everyone goes home and sulks.

It's so predictable as to be almost laughable.  We keep having these "revolutions" that fizzle out and folks just bend over and wait for the Big Slimy PTB to give it to them.  Remember Howard Jarvis?  Ron Paul?  Ross Perot?  John Anderson?  Jeremy Corbyn?  Donald Trump?  Barack Obama?

Yeah, I put Corbyn and Trump on that list because by this time next year, they'll be "remember whens" as well.  Same song, different verse.  Everyone gets all bowed up until the hardball comes out.

Enjoy it.  I've seen these revolutions come and go in the past 50 years.  I grew up in the 60s when everyone was going to change the world.  Then JFK and RFK got shot and POOF, all the air went out of that balloon and pretty soon, along came the 80s and all those idealists sold out for a little retirement money - which, by the way, is evaporating now, just as they need it.  See?  Sold out your ideals and got sold up the river, didn't you?

I'm like George Carlin: I'm not in this dog-and-pony show anymore.  I just sit back and watch the tide come in and go out.  Seems to be just about once a decade, if my count is right.

See, back in the old days, life was pretty rough and folks didn't lose much if they took a stand and changed the known world.  Now-a-days, folks have their VR systems, and their social media, and their dish washers, and their washing machines, and their houses (that they don't own).  If they ever really take a stand again the PTB, they would lose all their comfy gee-gaws and their internet connections and life would be a little difficult, and well, we just don't want to suffer,do we?  We've gotten soft and used to our A/C, heat and grocery stores.

Damn it!  We only want a revolution if it doesn't inconvenience us in any way.

The PTB know this and that's why Brexit and Trump will never win.  They hold our comfy lives for hostage, and golly gee whiz, we just don't want to give up all that to save future generations.