The Center Cannot Hold

 

Yesterday got kinda derailed because an old friend, now a bishop, sent me an infovid of a parrot goosestepping across a kitchen counter to Erika. Stirring stuff, but let's get serious. 

Can the center, as in our globalist managerial elites, their satraps in the media and their, ahem, brain trust in academia and on, can this hold or will it be swept away. Rod Dreher, writing in the European Conservative, thinks its days are numbered.

Here's a snapshot:

Until Joe Biden took the stage in last week’s debate with Donald Trump, the most catastrophically stupid presidential political decision of the year was Emmanuel Macron’s calling a snap election after the National Rally’s impressive showing in European parliamentary elections. After events over the past few days, it is still uncertain as to which blunder will have been the most consequential. Whatever the outcome, we are all watching corrupt systems collapse in real time. Amid this apocalypse—literally, an unveiling—we are seeing a kind of Reformation, the messy birth of a new order.

This is more the case in France than in the United States. The strong National Rally results in Sunday’s first round of voting occasioned an outpouring on France’s streets that could have been scripted by Camp of the Saints author Jean Raspail. 

In some French cities, Antifa and other leftist protesters set fires to express outrage at the results. In Paris, thousands of Islamists and leftists rallied against the ‘far right.’ Look at this clip captured by Luc Auffret. In this vast left-wing crowd, some protesters have raised various standards—the flag of Palestine, the flag of Pride, and so forth—but notice: you cannot see a single French tricolor there. 

Compare this to the image from a National Rally victory party on Sunday. Thousands upon thousands of French voters waving the tricolor, and singing the Marseillaise. 

What does the contrast tell you? It hardly needs elaboration, does it? Among other things, it is visual confirmation that le Grand Remplacement is no conspiracy theory, but established fact. Renaud Camus defines the Great Replacement as “the change of people, the substitution of one or several peoples for the people whose ancestral roots are there, whose history had for hundreds or thousands of years coincided with the territory in question.” All those native Frenchmen in that leftist mob, the ethnically Gallic too ashamed of France to raise her flag, demonstrate that the Great Replacement is also a state of mind. 

France is now in the middle of a fight for its future as a nation. France’s enemies are the Frenchmen who hate her, and the aliens they have brought in to replace the French who resist. This could not possibly be clearer now. Until Sunday, France’s enemies also included the elite establishmentarians of both Left and Right who facilitated le Grand Remplacement, and who counted on the French public’s fear of Vichy to blind them to the emerging reality. 

 

Strong words, and Dreher's clearly employed by the Ministry of Truth. He goes on to quote Rénaud Camus, who predicts the Balkanization of Europe and "future violence," before focusing on the UK and US. He concludes:

We remember the Summer of 1914 as the last idyllic season before the West blew itself to bits with World War I. Will we recall the Summer of 2024 as the last idyll before the West destroyed itself with civil war, even if fought primarily through increasingly radical politics? That conclusion seems rash—for now—but one thing is undeniably clear: the center of Western politics no longer holds. It is dead, and the ones who killed it are not Donald Trump, Marine Le Pen, Nigel Farage, and other politicians of the real Right, but rather the managerial liberals (including Republicans, Tories, and Gaullists) who lived by lies—and who, crucially, believed their own lies.

The historian Barbara Tuchman, writing about the folly of the Renaissance popes in provoking and failing to contain the Reformation, criticized their “obliviousness to the growing disaffection of constituents, primacy of self-aggrandizement, [and] illusion of invulnerable status.”

“They could not change” the system, Tuchman wrote, “because they were part of it, grew out of it, depended on it.” So it is with the liberal governing elites of the Western democracies. And now, a Reformation is upon us. 

I reckon Dreher's right in the X-Ring with this. You can and should read the whole thing here. Are we in that 1914 idyll? Your call.

Cheers,

LSP

AP24 Civil War

 

Have you seen Alex Garland's Civil War? Perhaps not, because you dread a deluge of leftist propaganda, fair call. But I think you'll be surprised to find the film doesn't go down that path. It's shot through the lens of a crew of journalists on a mission to interview the President even as secessionist forces are closing in on DC. 

So what follows is an attempted objective account of the horrors of war, not least a civil one, and Garland does a good job. Kirsten Dunst plays her part admirably as a hard-bitten combat journalist, her young protege ain't bad, elder NYT(!) journo veteran does the job and adrenaline fueled Joel (Wagner Moura) is on target and there you have it, an SUV of journos travelling from NYC to DC via Pittsburgh in the midst of a civil war.

There's a few moments of dread in the journey, though the violence is underplayed for the most part, and you'll be surprised to note secessionist forces are apparently color blind. Black, white, whatever have banded together to overthrow a tyrannical President (Nick Offerman), and they do. One race, human, against a corrupt despot. Nice.

Right on, and the WF, led by something which looks suspiciously like 1st Cav, hit DC and take out an ignominious, lying tyrant. Keen-eyed viewers will note he's shot in the end by a FPOC (Female Person Of Color), who is also the Sergeant in charge of the requisite kill team, ahem.

OK, the movie's not perfect but it does manage to steer a course between current partisan friction as if to report on a civil war that's actually going down, with all the inane wickedness therein. Are the combat scenes good? You be the judge, gentle readers, and you'll note our beloved ruler gets shot inside his DC fastness. What a good ending.

Watch Civil War, it's streaming on Amazon.

Topical, what?

LSP

PS. For a real review, written by a real journalist from, errrr, AP, go here.

PPS. Does the objective journalist still exist? My only real cavil about this flick is that it's main protagonists, the journos, are really well played, I recognize them even, from the past, but are they feasible today, much less tomorrow. That in mind, Civil War might be slated as a retrospective cast in the future. Dystopian, yes, but the real dystopia, from this flick's POV, would be the journalists themselves. Here, they're cast as truth tellers. I won't bang on.

The Center Cannot Hold

 

Imagine, if you can, the field of ruins stretching out from the Palatine Hill in Rome around the middle of the 7th century A.D. It was a city which had declined from over a million inhabitants to less than 30,000 persons in something like 150 years, maybe less.

The center, my friends, of the mighty Western Roman Empire most certainly didn't hold. Why? For many reasons, not least an increasing rottenness of currency manifesting in huge inflation and the ineluctable transfer of power to major landowners.

Put simply, a very few very wealthy people controlled everything and with that the state, Res Publica, was fractured. To put it another way, the center was bust. Fast forward to today. Here we are in the midst of American Imperium and guess what?

Our money's worthless, it's a note of debt at interest which can never be repaid, ever. And as it was in the days of ancient Rome, more and more power subsumes into the hands of a very few select men. You'll notice our ongoing presidential contest is an affair of wealthy plutocrats jousting for position. 

We have, if you care to step back and reflect, already Balkanized, and the process will continue; the center has not held and the Beast slouches towards Nazareth in all its degeneracy. Our task, gentle readers, is to stand steady and keep the Faith.

Your Old Friend,

LSP

So What Next?

 

OK, we've all had a good morning celebrating the sovereignty of Christ, well done, and fresh from that we look to the future. Dangerous, I know, because it hasn't happened yet. Still, and with all gospel charity, what's the score? Here's a couple of scenarios:

If Trump's legal team is right and can prove their case, then the lid's blown off the electoral crime of the century, we move into 12th Amendment territory and the election goes to 45. Deep State Uniparty corruption is exposed and fights back with shrieks of rage, Dem cities explode. Minneapolis-style but on a far bigger scale. That's one timeline, and the second's like unto it.

If the lower courts and SCOTUS brush off Trump's allegations and Biden's sworn in as 46 in a fit of establishment elite skulduggery, then all the millions of people who feel cheated of their vote don't accept the result. Patriots, backed into a corner, go hot when pushed. By, say, yet more lockdowns, hated taxation, BLM/Antifa shenanigans or a gun grab. Then there's a third way.

Everyone just rolls over and dies in the face of either party winning. You know, hey, just get over it and get on with life as best you can, like an obedient serf.

For what it's worth, I don't see option three playing out, people are too politicized and the stakes, at this point, are too high. The evil, corrupt, cheating, deceitful, elitist donkeys can't lose or they hang. 45's people, I don't say the GOP, can't lose either. If they do, there goes the Republic they say they love.

Where does this leave us, with civil war? Possibly, but perhaps naively I don't see the Forces or LE getting into an internicene gunfight. Like what, Hell on Wheels is going to go against Big Red One? No. 

That said, we can imagine balkanization. Wayne County, Detroit, sets up on its own along with Philly and other centers of excellence. Same on the other side. The Union and Federal power breaks down.

If that plays out we begin to enter the world of Late Antiquity. The center cannot hold and rival millionaires and their armies vie for power.

But what do I know, just a simple country parson.

Thoughts?

LSP