We're All Soviets And Maybe Worse

 

History, say the experts, may not repeat but it does rhyme. Yes, and Nial Ferguson sees more than a little similarity between the US and late Soviet Russia. He writes about it in his Free Press column, We're All Soviets Now, and Helen Andrews at The American Conservative sums it up. Viz. "Gerontocratic leadership; bloated government; lack of trust in institutions; high death rates; and 'a bizarre ideology that no one really believes in.'"

Quite, but Helen doesn't think Nial goes far enough, here's a longish excerpt:

In the case of the economy, for example, is the most Soviet thing about America really that our projected federal deficits exceed 5 percent of GDP, as Ferguson notes? Ferguson bemoans that the “insertion of the central government into the investment decision-making process” represented by “the Biden administration’s ‘industrial policy.’”

Surely that’s small potatoes compared to the fact that one sixth of the American economy is devoted to health care, a sector where, as a recent piece by TAC’s own Jude Russo hilariously details, the numbers are all fake. The amount of money sloshing around insurers and hospitals is absolutely massive, yet the prices involved bear no relation to utility or even reality. In exchange for devoting such a big chunk of our economy to medicine, what do we get in exchange? The occasional miracle, and a lot of overtreated octogenarians and routine care at inflated costs.

Higher education is another incubus sitting atop the American economy. It employs 4 million people and is responsible for $1.6 trillion in student loan debt, yet a layman struggles to see where any value is being created at all, much less value proportionate to the expense. As with health care, higher ed produces a small number of genuine miracles—groundbreaking research or brilliant scholarship—dwarfed by a vast army of functionaries whose net value to society is, frankly, negative. Everyone can tell that the system is rotten, yet schools still have the power to squeeze middle-class parents for every penny they’re worth.

Beyond “eds and meds,” what other growth industries are politicians betting their states’ and cities’ future prosperity on? Legalized weed and gambling. That is New York’s plan for making up its post-pandemic revenue shortfall. Many states are banking on sports betting as a source of fresh taxes. Even if these vice industries created as much revenue as their advocates promised—and early evidence suggests that they do not—they would still be pernicious, destroying more value than they create. 

The essence of a late Soviet economy is not that the state plays a big role. It is that the average citizen looks around and thinks, This can’t possibly continue forever. The whole system is fake and insane. That is why Ferguson is wrong to look for evidence for his thesis in budget projections rather than the industries like health care and higher ed, which are neither capitalist nor socialist but mutant combinations of the worst of each.  

This can’t possibly continue forever. The whole system is fake and insane. Right on, to the tune of 1TN$ every 100 days. Like no kidding, our debt mounts up by a trillion, yes, a trillion dollars every quarter. It is, indeed, fake and insane. But driven insane by what?

Helen doesn't say, but I'll throw one out there. By Satan. Here again history rhymes. The Bolsheviks attacked the icons of Christ and his saints, gouging the holy images with their nails like enraged beasts. Their descendants go one further, defacing the image of God in all of us by creating blasphemous parodies of men and women in the name of freedom.

You will note, dear readers, that their rage when confronted is approximately equivalent to that of the Red Terror of yesteryear. History most certainly rhymes and smart people are reading Dostoevsky's Devils.

Your Old Country Pal,

LSP

Defeat Bolshevism

 

We fight against principalities and powers, against wickedness in high places. Do you think the demons can win? They may appear to do so, but such is hubris before they're cast into the Lake of Fire. In the meanwhile, stand firm, resolute in the Faith.

Defeat Demonic Bolshevism, and that's not said lightly.

Roger?

LSP

Sunday Message

 

This one's via Dostoevsky to Maikov in 1870:

Exactly the same thing happened in our country: the devils went out of the Russian man and entered into a herd of swine, into the Nechaevs (nihilists)… These are drowned or will be drowned, and the healed man, from whom the devils have departed, sits at the feet of Jesus… And bear this in mind, my dear friend, that a man who loses his people and his national roots also loses faith in his fathers and his God. Well, if you really want to know – this is in essence the theme of my novel [Demons].

Note the seer-like precision of will be drowned. Take heart from that, but know, great will be the fall of it.

Cheers,

LSP

California Collapsing?

 

California is famous for being incredibly rich, populous, and totally lib progressive. A veritable Millionaire Socialist utopia, or is it? Perhaps people are fleeing the Golden State for a reason. Via Zero:

Yet now, California is in terminal collapse and crisis. Governor Gavin Newsom, farcically promoted by the national Mainstream Media (MSM) as a heroic White Knight in Shining Armor in the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic last spring has been exposed even in his own state as a catastrophic bungler and hypocrite who has never had a clue what he was – or more usually was not – doing. As I write, California’s sick and tired citizens are close to providing the 1.5 million signatures necessary to pull Newsom into what would certainly be a chaotic recall election.

 

Again:

Los Angeles, the state’s largest city and arguably the most populous now in the United States, has become a byword for violent crime and especially the stronghold of the enormous, ultraviolent and rapidly growing MS 13 organization, routinely mislabeled as a mere “gang” in media reports. MS 13 has up to 50,000 members worldwide of whom at least 10,000, officially, and probably twice as many according to the private assessments of many police officers are in LA.

 

And what about San Francisco, notoriously twinned with Austin?

San Francisco – America’s “anything goes” city – is in even worse shape. Its most famous, historically popular and beautiful stylish locations are now swamped with aggressive, unsanitary street people who openly urinate and defecate in the streets. Public services, long superb, are now appalling.

 

To say nothing of mindless, Green induced wildfires and rolling blackouts as energy follows the science and turns off. We had a taste of that in Texas last week when snow broke all the windmills.

The question is, will the rest of the country follow California's gender neutral Potato Head genius into dystopian nightmare? If the ongoing ammo shortage is anything to go buy, the people are voting "yes."

Cheers,

LSP

Cossacks

Here at the Compound we think this inf-video speaks for itself.

Ride on,

LSP

Podesta Satan Shocka!

In what is undoubtedly the most bizarre Wikileaks revelation to date, Clinton campaign chairman John Podesta was invited to a “spirit cooking dinner” by performance artist Marina Abramovic, to take part in an occult ritual founded by Satanist 

Aleister Crowley.

Clinton campaign supremo, John Podesta, a Crowleyite Satanist? Well I never! And we have to ask, how many more top-level Democrats are Thelemite initiates. Go on, have a guess.

Marina

In the meanwhile, as you're reflecting on this dark mystery, have a look at the magic ingredients favored by Aleister's disciple, Marina, and her friend, John Podesta.

Remember this, Abramovic, Podesta, Hillary et al, the Devil devours his own. As above? Certainly so below.

You have been warned.

LSP

Fort Worth Rides The Rainbow

Who'd have thought it, the gateway to the West, Cowtown, Texas' own Fort Worth, with its fabled stockyards and legends of the frontier, has gone trans and decided to ride the rainbow. At least its schools have. Here's highlights from the recent Fort Worth ISD Rainbow Directive, via Dreher:

There doesn’t need to be a medical or mental health diagnosis involved. If a male student says he’s a girl, then he’s a girl, and vice versa.

Schools are instructed to keep the student’s asserted gender identity hidden from parents unless authorized to share that information with them.

School personnel are to consider themselves to be allies of a student undergoing gender transitioning. That means not telling their parents or guardians.

Transgender students must have the opportunity to participate in school sports as the gender they claim to be, though they are not guaranteed this as a right.

Teachers are no longer to call their students “boys” and “girls,” but to use gender-neutral language to refer to them, e.g., “students.”

Classrooms are to “feature diversity” in their classroom materials.

Well there you go, parents. Send your kids to a Fort Worth public school so they can get sexually confused. But don't worry, it'll be a special secret between your child and their teachers, you won't be allowed to know. That's forbidden, by the State and its Teachers. Obey. Them. 

No fooling and remember, you're paying for this. Where will it end?

Dreher observes:

Don’t be fooled: the bathroom issue is a proxy for a deeper conflict over what it means to be male and female, and beyond that, about fundamental human nature. These standards are collapsing in American society in part because of elites pushing against them, but also — and perhaps more so — because radical individualism is going into hyperdrive. We call it freedom — freedom to choose who you are, with neither custom, nor religion, nor even biology standing in the way of your will. But here’s what’s going to happen. People who submit to this way of thinking will find that their freedom, so construed, will make it impossible for them to construct a coherent, stable identity. They’re not going to make it. This perversion of liberty will wreck them.

I'd add that the perversion of liberty will end in totalitarianism, the same totalitarianism we're beginning to see in Fort Worth's schools. You can read all about it in Dostoevsky's Devils and Crime and Punishment, the ideology hasn't changed, though technology has.

Good Look, Dude. now Everyone Will Think You're a Sexy Chick

In a similar vein, Bruce Jenner wants to be a man again. Good thing he kept his "biology," eh?

LSP