rickey, now i am gonna "eh's'plain" sumthin', what professor harbold meant, when he said ....

..., "you must remember, at some point the romans became the italians."  professor robert harbold was one of my poli sci professors in college, and he labored mightily to dent my resistance to formal education, and the receipt of learning.  well, he may have made more of an impression on me than he dreamt.  but, i certainly had no idea it would take 40 years for it to take effect, and i expect that he was probably more optimistic, too.  all things considered, however, he would have said better late! than never!, ... .  (:O }}}}

but, let me digress, just a bit.--

you remember in the old "i love lucy show," when dezi arnez as rickey ricardo would say to lucille ball, "lucy, ... , you got some 'eh's'plainin' to do," after one of her harebrained schemes went ludicrously awry?  and lucy would contritely "'eh's'plain" why it was she did something.

well, let me "eh's'plain."  just what i think professor harbold meant by that.  and, we will once again have recourse to angelo m. codevilla's great essay, "america's ruling class and the perils of revolution."  in this seminal essay, codevilla describes a ruling class made formidable by its networking, and focused supremely on seizing control of the institutions of power in our society, to better perpetuate its rule.  in so doing, as the good little leftists that they are, they have surrendered all vestiges of allegiance to the great myths of the "bourgeoisie," and have embraced power and perpetuation of rule as their ethic.  given this penetrating analysis, none of us should be even remotely surprised by the spectacle of s.e.i.u. and black panther thugs patrolling the voting booth to intimidate voters from expressing their conscious.

now, the following is not non sequitur.  it is about as sequitur as you can get.

there is no accident in the history of the roman empire lasting for centuries.  the romans were fastidiously pious in the observance of civic virtue, and the romans were disciplined, rigorous, moral and ethical in spite of what you may think of them.  virtues such as piety, courage, honor, integrity, honesty, rectitude were valued, and rigorously adhered to.

for centuries.  and, then they weren't.  and gave way to expediency, and lust for power and wealth.  and, when the ancient virtues gave way, so did the romans.  they became italians.

this is what professor harbold meant by his observation, and, so understood, it became excoriation and not witticism.  the italians, in the good professor's opinion, lacked virtue and courage.

and, this my friends, is professor angelo m. codevilla's indictment of america's ruling elite.

it has engaged in criticizing and attacking the virtues that formally characterized the american experience, to the point where it is confident enough now to openly ridicule those virtues, and to scoff and ridicule those who adhere to them.  it openly despises the rule of law that characterized two centuries of unparalleled progress and social advancement.

such is its strength.  it knows no constraints.  observes no rules.

and, as a consequence, it believes in nothing.  except its right to rule.

it is ruthless.

and, believing nothing, this is its fatal weakness, the seeds to its downfall.

it knows no virtue.  its despises courage, service and sacrifice.  it knows nothing of rigor, it knows nothing of discipline, it ridicules the notion that values and beliefs and convictions are worth dying for.  it extols nothing except raw pleasure, and spurns love and devotion as something for chumps.  it scorns the love of a man for a woman, a woman for a man, and the love of parents for children as found in marriage.

it delegates the exercise of the thuggery done in behalf of state rule to minions who perform there duty for financial reward, comfort and status.

it does not function by belief and loyalty, but by reward.

and, divorced as it is from the beliefs and loyalty of those over who it presides, it can expect no succor from its subjects if attacked.  and, in fact, the likely source of attack upon our ruling italian elites, ... ,as cynical and world weary as any italian ever portrayed in "catch 22" ever thought of being, ... , comes precisely from us, as janet napolitano so rightfully fears.

friends, the elite ruling this country has no friends.  as charles durning says to his idiot son in in "oh, brother, where art thou," we need a constituency.  the elites ruling this country do so uneasily, and uneasily lie the heads of tyrants, because they know that they are despised by us.

and, they have no friends among us.

and, here is the clincher as to why a selective attack upon the loci of the elites power structure, and selective attack upon its symbols and spokesmen, can topple this elite from its pretended position of "elevation above and beyond us."

the reason is simple.

america's ruling elite has no protectors among us.  the u.s. military despises obama and his minions and his leftist professors and the hollywood scum who consort with hugo chavez and his like.  this is why obama wants to create a police force equal to our military, to serve him, and to repress us.

and, the ruling elite has been so effective in destroying the values it hates in us, amongst its own, that it has no protectors from its own who are willing to sacrifice themselves.  the left in america has been just as effective as the left in europe in producing generation upon generation of adherents who believe in nothing, who serve nothing, and who will sacrifice themselves for nothing.  they will not do it for positive virtues such as courage, integrity and honor, and they sure as hell will not do it for expediency.

this is the trouble with people who scoff and believe in nothing.  neither do they believe in themselves.

and, this is why they are vulnerable, despite the overwhelming control they have over the institutions of power, in the government, in the unions, in academia, and amongst the oligarchs of commerce.

they are nihilists.  they may join the fight initially to preserve their prestige and power and wealth.  but, they have no stomach for protracted conflict with us, just as they have no stomach for protracted conflict with the taliban.

al queda and taliban know this.  they is why they "negotiate" with our ruling elites through propaganda and international conference, knowing they cannot defeat our military.  why would they do it any differently, with the great example of the viet nam capitulation before them.

friends, get this through your heads.--

if they have no stomach for such things on foreign soil, when it is us they sacrifice, and we are to them no more than a better smelling peasantry, ... , then think of how little stomach for such things they will have in conflict upon our home ground, when it is they who are called upon to sacrifice (and they will not, as they do not believe in such matters), when it is they who die at the hands of the peasantry.

i invite anyone who disagrees with this analysis to consider otherwise.

john jay @ 07.20.2010

Comments

[rbm411]

The real question has been and will be for many more years; When will the masses revolt. The answer, as your professor would have told you, is after a period of real suffering and things are getting better for the masses. That's when revolutions happen. When things are bad, and they couldn't even be hinted at being bad right now, people spend all their time and energy on survival. It's when things start getting better and people aren't as worried about their next meal that revolutions really happen.

[john jay]

rbm411:

yes, i think your history is pretty accurate on this point. revolutions tend to happen after the screws have been loosed a bit, and after repressive regimes have made some reforms.

such was the case of the 1917 soviet revolution, with the added factor that the czarist regime had been terribly weakened by its involvment in wwi in support of france. the germans actually smuggled lenin back into russia near the end of the war in a cattle car, hoping that he would foment revolution.

not a very prudent thing to do for a monarchy supported by an old fashioned military.

and, for the most part, the poor and the oppressed tend not to make revolution, as it is most often carried forward by those who have been born into or achieved privilege and status. this was certainly true of the american revolution, led by lawyers and printers and preachers, and a smattering of philosophs and poets.

revolutions, and counter reformations tend to be made and led by people of thought and intellect, and not by hungry people. it is as you say, those who are worried about their next meal tend to have their focus elsewhere than politics and ethics and morality, and such like.

all of these things are why, by the way, our friend obama and his ilk & minions have a very charry eye cast towards bloggers and those who attend tea parties.

they know we are dangerous for matters of intellect and principle. they also know that we are resolute and armed.

and just pretty damned touchy about their usurpations.

john jay

[john jay]

rbm411:

and, then there is this to consider.

a lot goes into "ramping up" a revolution or civil war before it actually occurs.

in our revolution, the bostom "tea party" and thomas paine, and the letters of correspondance, and the writing of the adams, pater & fils, and even of john jay.

and, prior to our civil war, the abolitionists, and frederick douglas, and bloody kansas, and john brown, a whole lot of things were happening to "promote" the fight over slavery, not the least of which was building the intellectual conviction and moral fervor and outrage necessary to bring the matter to where, 1.)people felt the coming war to be necessary & proper, and 2.)the popular passion was at a significant boil.

i believe the pot is now well past simmer in this country, and that we have only to lay a convincing case to have people morally convinced that something is to be done. we are at the stage, where lenis asked, "what is to be done?"

i do not know if masses of folks would commit themselves to full blown civil war just yet, ... , we seem not there.

but, i do think that the people are convinced that something must be done to protect our liberties, and to maintain self rule.

i do not think, for instance, that the populace will surrender its guns to the government without a fight, and without the populace supporting those who will fight.

and, as some of the bombings of abortion clinics and the like show, i think that there is a very large and significant portion of the population who would support resistance and insurgency by harboring its participants, and by providing material and financial support to those who would carry it on.

and, if the government tries to take our weapons, i think all hell will break loose right now.

and, people would put the contest to g_d right now, as john locke would put it.

john jay

[john jay]

p.s. whatever approach they might take, u.n. treaty, international accord, administrative order, ... , they want 'em, they can come get 'em.

laughing.

i didn't spend 25 years practicing law and protecting rights and liberties, to cough those things up to these pissants without a scrape.

laughing. bring it on.

[rbm411]

JJ:

I suppose we are closer to a reformation than a revolution. However, the people in power keep trying to divide to remain in power and that can be a very dangerous game. Just the NAACP/Breitbart dustup shows how quickly that kind of rhetoric spins out of control and can lead into unintended consequences. Of course, that type of chaos and confusion could be what they want.

Agreed. Bring it on!

[Robert]

I wrote a comment on another article, which looks like it would be even more appropriate here. Revolutions and wars tend to come near the bottom of social mood declines of large degree. For reference, look at the chart at: http://www.elliottwave.com/freeupdates/archives/2010/03/03/Callous-Uncaring-and-Unforgiving.aspx
Note the approximate ending dates for Supercycle (c) of Grand Supercycle II, Cycle c of Supercycle (II), and Supercycle (IV) - 1784, 1859, and 1932 - the end of the American Revolution, shortly before the start of the Civil War, and a few years before the start of World War II. If you look at Supercycle (IV) in real terms, it becomes a contracting triangle formation with its wave C bottoming in 1939, the year the war started. We are currently in Cycle c of Supercycle (a) of Grand Supercycle [IV]. Socionomics has found that the biggest wars break out around the lows of the largest-degree wave c of a pattern. During this Grand Supercycle degree correction, we can expect the BIG war at the bottom of Supercycle (c), which is probably somewhere from 30 to 40 years away. Plenty of anger can build up during the declining phases of that time. I don't know what form the conflict at the bottom of Supercycle (c) will take, but I can think of four possibilities, in increasing order of bloodshed: (1) Secession and breakup of the United States; (2) Civil War II; (3) World War III, probably involving the use of offensive nuclear weaponry; (4) Islamic world vs. non-Muslim world, probably also involving offensive use of nuclear weapons. The best bet I can see for the masses revolting militarily would be the bottom of Supercycle (c). We are certainly ready to revolt politically right now, using the ballot box to get rid of as many members of Obama's party as possible this year, and most likely most of the rest in 2012. I don't know to what extent Republicans elected to replace Democrats will abolish and tear down the Democrat party's structure of tyranny during their time in power, which will likely be about 20 years or so, running the entire time of a Supercycle wave (b) recovery. The more constitutional conservatives elected, the better, and the more they will likely be able to abolish before Supercycle (c) in mood eventually starts, during which the "ruling class" may regain power. One would hope reforms will be put in place during Supercycle (b) to limit what they can do, and make the limits stick, should that happen. If there isn't an external enemy such as Islam on which to focus all the anger that will have built up by the bottom of Supercycle (c), then we can expect the anger to be directed internally in the form of a breakup or civil war.

And while the "ruling class" ridicules the notion that values and beliefs and convictions are worth dying for, there should be plenty of real Americans with the conviction that such values and beliefs are worth killing leftist tyrants for.

[john jay]

robert:

thank you for these letters.

it will take me a while to digest all of this.

i am afraid that i am not familiar with this "cycle" business, and tend not to think in these terms, rather i tend to be stuck in the "get mad," "get even" and the "don't step on me" level of analysis.

you may be outta my league. but, i will look at these things, and read them avidly, and see if they make any sense.

i tend not to be formally reductionistic, and more of a metaphorical type thinker. this will be a new and worthwhile experience for me.

it will take some time to get up to speed on these matters.

john

[john jay]

carl:

i thought that you might be interested in this post at atlas shrugs, relating to ibrahim hooper a spokesperson for CAIR.

this post describes a real life full blown terrorist in the person of ibrahim hooper, a fund raiser for hamas and other iranian proxies. http://atlasshrugs2000.typepad.com/atlas_shrugs/2010/08/i-was-sitting-right-there-with-a-microphone-on-hearing-the-whole-thing-and-they-wouldnt-let-me-rebut-the-false-charges-and.html#comments .

carl, i am curious.

do you write hooper accusing him of being a killer, murderer and terrorist?

of course you don't. you and your daily kos brethren would never think of doing such a thing.

that's because you are either a radical leftist in the mold of marcuse and alinsky, or the tool of the same. and, it is also because while hooper is a terrorist in fact, in fact he is "your terrorist," your little point man in the assault upon america.

well, come on carl, you don't like people who rise up to defend themselves because they espouse the use of righteous self defense in order to do so, why don't you turn your distaste for such things upon hooper, who is a genuine terrorist and associates with people who have graduated from CAIR to become real life terrorists in the middle east, upon their expulsion from the united states?

it is, old friend, because you are a tool. plain and simple.

john jay