John Hayward Profile picture
22 Dec, 13 tweets, 3 min read
Everything about the pandemic, culminating in the Covid stimulus/budget debacle, is a painful reminder that your ruling class does not see itself as "public servants" by any stretch of the imagination. They think their calling is to control you, shape you, reeducate you.
For the ruling class, their personal fetishes and ideological obsessions are VASTLY more important than your very life. You get pocket change while they pour countless billions into everything that matters to THEM. They couldn't be more insultingly obvious about it.
The illusion that voters have any meaningful control over the central government grows thin. Even during the worst crisis of our lifetimes, the ruling class thinks NOTHING of flipping us off while seizing our national wealth for their privileged concerns. No hesitation at all.
This is the inherent corruption of statism. People are seduced with fairy tales about wise elites making brilliant plans that deliver maximum good to the people, guiding us with a vision so much broader, deeper, and less selfish than grubby little people and greedy businesses.
But you see now, again, at a cost of trillions of dollars, the ugly truth: there is NO ONE more selfish and short-sighted than the political class in Washington. Even the robber barons of old at least built some useful stuff that outlived them.
Brilliant designs? Long-term vision? Selfless devotion to national service? Give me a damn break. Your ruling class doesn't even LIKE this nation, for the most part, let alone feel any sense of duty towards it. All they see is loot and pillage, for themselves and their allies.
All they see when they look to the future is taxpayers yet unborn, who they can plunder today with deficit spending. They aren't thinking any further than the next frenzied spending bill. Their mega-government collapses in a useless heap at the first sign of real crisis.
Notice that no matter how much money they siphon out of the private sector, no matter how much deficit money they spend, they ALWAYS claim every single function of government is catastrophically underfunded whenever it's called upon to do anything.
I call it coin-operated statism: they spend trillions building this titanic government, but if you want it to actually DO anything useful, you have to shove more cash into in the coin slot. It's a system that only "solves" largely imaginary problems that profit the ruling class.
It's heartless greed on a breathtaking scale, illustrated once again by the ruling class slobbering over the opportunity to exploit the pandemic for political and financial gain. It's corruption baked in so deep that it's hard to find anything honest left in the system.
And rest assured, nobody involved in this disgusting festival of lust and greed thinks of YOU as their "boss." At best, you're an obstacle to be overcome during election season. They would laugh at the notion of putting YOUR needs, priorities, or livelihood above their own.
Every single organ of the State spends all day, every day, blasting that message at us: We loathsome deplorables are miserable, everything we want is foolish and hateful, our history is filled with evil. We're all criminals, America is a prison, politicians are the wardens.
Schools, media, popular culture, government programs - all of it sends that message. We've been beaten into submission. We can only register a flicker of dull surprise at times like this, when the ruling class proves once again how greedy and short-sighted it is. /end

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More from @Doc_0

23 Dec
When people voted to drain the swamp, they knew the alligators - the high-profile D.C. power players, special interests, and safe seat senators-for-life - would be a problem. They underestimated the vast horde of smaller critters squirming in the muck at the bottom of the swamp.
As @davereaboi pointed out, the ecosystem that feeds on the endless torrent of deficit-fueled D.C. spending is vast beyond belief, and it has tentacles that reach around the world. That ecosystem has multiple layers, and every one of them will fight to keep Big Gov money flowing.
@davereaboi There are entities wholly dedicated to spend money spent by entities that spend money spent by entities that spend money spent by entities that spend money from D.C. Many are invisible to taxpayers. Some are foreign operations utterly beyond the reach of American voters.
Read 16 tweets
18 Dec
The pandemic is prompting a lot of rethinking about the nature of work and capitalism. Here is one way to think about employment: for most people, it vastly increases the value of your time, which is the most important capital you own.
Look at a few of the objects in the room where you're sitting right now. How long would it have taken you to create them, all by yourself? Could you do it at all? Would those objects be of comparable quality if you tried making them with your own hands?
You probably bought most of the things in your room, including the computer or phone you're reading this on. You made those purchases with money you earned by working at your job. Your paycheck therefore increased the value of your labor by several orders of magnitude.
Read 20 tweets
16 Dec
Having come of age in the 80s, it's been amazing to watch the corporate world swing hard to the Left, while the Left switched from diehard anti-corporatism to fawning reverence for billionaires and big businesses that push the "correct" politics.
The cyberpunk dystopia is here, and guess what? It's giant "liberal" corporations controlling speech and using financial muscle to impose ideology on the masses. Left-wing media swoons while billionaire CEOs tell us how to live. The subversives and rebels are conservatives.
This is so completely, 180 degrees different from the corporatist dystopia liberals constantly predicted during the 80s. All of their visions were nightmarish distortions of their caricature of Reaganism. They either hid the true nature of corporatism or were utterly blind to it.
Read 7 tweets
16 Dec
One thing people on the Right could learn from the Left: stop treating elections and court cases as either total victories or final defeats. The battle for truth, justice, and the American Way is never-ending. Never let either friends or foes convince you otherwise.
Granted, there is far too much centralized coercive power in our system, so a lot of bad things can happen after a national election. The stakes are always high - much *too* high for a constitutional republic of sovereign citizens.
But generally speaking, the Left has long been better about using power when they have it, and redoubling their efforts to regain power after they lose it. The Right is more susceptible to all-is-lost fatalism and hopelessness born of deep (and often justified) cynicism.
Read 27 tweets
15 Dec
It's remarkable how perfectly Covid-19 slotted into all of the worst tendencies and most malevolent trends in Western politics. It made every bad trend much worse. It was rocket fuel for civilizational decline.
Control freaks had a field day. Authoritarianism and totalitarianism are flourishing as never before in the postwar era. It's the Super Bowl for expensive, ineffective, inept managerial liberalism. Tribalism is running wild. Collectivist moralism is everywhere.
Societies that were already going insane due to the constant neurotic fits of social media suffered complete nervous breakdowns. Panic and hysteria are rampant. The American election was turned into a joke by coronavirus-inspired "emergency measures."
Read 9 tweets
14 Dec
Around the world, very much including the Western world, real power is measured by the ability to silence criticism.

The highest reaches of power are measured by the ability to force people to speak in politically-approved ways.
The ability to silence criticism is a signifier of power. It's how truly powerful groups and regimes recognize each other. If free people can challenge your ideals or mock you without fear, you aren't TRULY powerful, no matter how much authority you might nominally possess.
And if you can force people to speak, force them to use your preferred language, penalize them socially or legally for failing to signal their support for your agenda, then you've entered the winner's circle. Your government or movement has taken a seat at the highest table.
Read 14 tweets

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