"Assume the Crash Position"

Sometimes it is good to get an outsider's impression. Sarah Hoyt writes generally about decline, and more specifically about our current leadership, and why and where it hopes to take us.

Firstly, Ms. Hoyt notes:

To expect the worst to happen in catastrophic situations is just as unreasonable as to expect the best to happen. Neither are realistic outcomes.

For instance, even if we seem to be heading towards a cooling period (we’ve had maybe three hot days so far this year) I don’t expect us to revert to the age of cavemen and hunt mammoths. It’s a very inconvenient mode of the human brain that we tend to think in stories. So when we talk about a crash people expect the middle ages. In fact, that is in the article at PJM.

The middle ages are grossly unlikely. Grossly, bizarrely unlikely. Technology doesn’t go backwards when the economy and society collapse. It just becomes… dingy.

My experience in Portugal through the hard times is that electricity became… unreliable. Food on shelves became iffy (so you stockpiled when you could) and there were a hundred others daily inconveniences. I understand if it had advanced all the way to a communist state it would have got even worse, but never, mind you, like the middle ages. Here’s the thing, even in the soviet union, life was dingy, dangerous and icky, but it was still life in an industrial state.

Second, Ms. Hoyt comments on where our political leadership hopes to take us:

... The websites are abuzz again, with the old question “dunce or traitor?” I fail to see why it’s one or the other. I very much think it’s both. It’s traitor because he was raised to be a traitor. I don’t know how to link L. Neil Smith’s article, so I’ll just say that he pointed out that someone who was raised as a communist, is in fact a communist. Why would he be anything else? It would require a Road of Damascus experience, and I don’t remember his telling us of one. And trust me, he would have. 

So, there’s the traitor part. But in it there’s the dunce part too. 

Look, I’m not going to consider whether or not communists can be very smart. Maybe they can. I’ve never met any, though. 

Oh, raw IQ, sure. But people don’t move and choose through raw IQ. My brother is brilliant. He’s also a deeply conventional man. This mean his thoughts move only in the “approved thoughts for brilliant people” mode of the last century – that is, leftist. We have a childhood friend who is an European communist leader (I suppose not openly, but who knows?) Is he stupid? Not raw IQ. But communism requires him to believe certain things. Such as “the right people” will naturally seize power after a collapse. 

That’s what we’re dealing with here. Given Obama’s performance off script, I don’t think his dunceness is that smart. Look, as with his being a red diaper baby, it doesn’t even take much guessing. The evidence is RIGHT before our eyes. If he were smart, it would have been shouted from the rooftops. IQ? Grades? Achievement of some sort?
Come on, the biggest thing they have to tout is the fact that he was editor of the Harvard Law review, even if he published nothing. That means IQ, grades and achievement are all of a nullity or very close. Which – yes, I’m going to be crude here – in an age of political correctness when Harvard would want to give him a “win” (i.e. good grades/honors) just because of his color and his exotic religious background, means he must be something special in the way of dumb. 

That is important, to an extent, because it means to the extent he’s in control, we’ll get dunce-moves. 

But he’s not fully in control. From the disabled credit card checks, to the carefully scripted campaign that he clearly had bugger all to do with, it’s been clear all along someone else is driving this train. And that person might or might not be a dunce, but they are, definitely a true believer. 

The problem posed by “dunce or traitor” is that the answer is both. He is a traitor, but to the extent that it’s not working, it’s because he’s also a dunce. And whether he’s a dunce in IQ or an ideology-impaired-dunce the result is the same. 

For instance, have you guys figured out yet that OWS’s was supposed to be an attempt at a “proletarian revolution”? No? If you look at it, it becomes clear. Raised on stories of proletarian revolution, they thought if they squeezed us just enough, and then provided a spark – OWS screaming about the 1% — the country would spontaneously rise up in a communist revolution. 

This was obvious to me, because I KNOW communist myth. 

Then there was gun control, which has failed, even despite Fast and Furious. And Fast and Furious is something that only crazy, delusional and dumb people would dream up.
But there are things he can still do – crash the economy (the continuous money printing can’t go on) disarm (while China arms) and effectively switch sides in the war on terror.
These might be enough. I can see a very difficult winter ahead. I am still/again afraid that we’ll lose at least a city, and possibly more to enemy action. And I’m very afraid both my sons will end up in uniform and possibly dying to pay for this massive mistake.

So… It’s time to assume crash position.

It is clear from Obama's actions (for instance, the nonstop golf excursions and vacations) that he is indifferent to governance. Hoyt provides an explanation for this indifference--that Obama doesn't care because he is not in charge.