“Did you ever run for dictator of anything?” – Green Acres
Why didn’t Julius Caesar ever say “thank you” to anyone? He didn’t speak English.
This is Part II of the series. Part I can be found here (LINK).
The history of when the United States started to slip into a dictatorship is long, but I’ll start with the Civil War. The worst part of the Civil War (besides, you know, all of the dead people) was Lincoln running roughshod over the Constitution whenever it suited him:
- Shut down opposition newspapers, arresting the owners and editors,
- Arrested a former congressman (generally a good idea) and put him to a military tribunal (he wasn’t in the military) and then . . . deported him to the Confederacy,
- Legalized disco, and
- Put the entire state of Maryland under martial law.
Important Civil War Fact: It is not true that, despite popular conception, Lincoln had written the first draft of the Gettysburg Address on a Bacon Swiss Hand-Breaded Chicken Sandwich™ wrapper from Carl’s Jr.© Lincoln actually preferred Arby’s®.
The movie Lincoln grossed $300,000,000, which is weird because Abe normally didn’t do well in theaters.
But the slip toward despotism wasn’t done and the precedent was one people didn’t forget: in a crisis, the rights of the citizens who oppose you are optional. War and crisis seemed to bring it out the best, and although I could spend quite a bit about the overreaches of other presidents (Woodrow Wilson, I’m looking at you) the next person grasping for the tyrant’s ring was Franklin Delano Roosevelt.
FDR was really awful, if you love liberty. His expansion of Federal power (unlike most of Lincoln’s) is still with us today. As the economic crisis of the Great Depression hit nation after nation and led to dictatorships across the world, America craved their own Strong Man.
It also explains why he never ran for office.
Roosevelt was more than ready. It is quite arguable that the vast majority of the things that Roosevelt did made the crisis longer. It is acknowledged today by the Federal Reserve™ (thanks, Wilson) that they not only caused the Great Depression, but that their actions made it worse. It makes me so mad: if I didn’t have a cold, I’d Sudafed®.
Roosevelt did not let the crisis go to waste. He created power structure after power structure in the country. Social Security. Threatening the Supreme Court so that his definition of the Interstate Commerce Clause was adopted, which allows the Federal government to reach into almost every business in the country today.
Roosevelt also violated the idea that presidents served two terms, and two terms only. Thankfully, he died about 300 years into his presidency. And, thankfully, he inspired a Constitutional Amendment to prevent anyone from rolling in his wheelchair tracks.
But the rot of creeping state control continued. What held it at bay was, thankfully (and oddly enough), the Soviets.
I didn’t like their food, though – I’m against the Soviet Onion.
Centralization is always the goal of the dictator. In order to compete with the Soviets, though, we needed to keep our economy in overdrive to build more jets and missiles and nuclear bombs. The easiest way to do that? Dispersed knowledge. Incentives. Voluntary cooperation. In short, capitalism. The Soviets may have thought that they’d bury us, but in reality they never could keep up with a people motivated by freedom, patriotism, and profit.
We buried the Soviets.
But the requirement to beat them also required a people in the United States that were ill-suited for a Caesar.
Unfortunately, in addition to building missiles, the communists had been trying to hollow out the institutions of the United States. It’s ironic: the Soviet Union was hollowed out by communism around the same time that the big rot of communism that the Soviets planted in the United States started to show here. They wormed their way through what I now call The List of the Long March through the Institutions:
- Colleges and Universities
- The K-12 educational system.
- Most Protestant religious organizations.
- Most Catholic organizations.
- The American Medical Association.
- Most departments of the Federal government, absent the armed services.
- The general officer corps of the armed services.
- The courts.
- Silicon Valley tech companies.
- Most Fortune® 500™ companies.
I had a communist girlfriend who I later found out was a psycho. How did I miss the red flags?
The control of these Institutions ultimately gives the Left the power to destabilize society. It rots society from within. The signs of that sort of rot are so big they cannot be concealed now:
- 70% of citizens supporting some form of mandatory vaxx in blue states (81% in Washington, D.C.),
- Only speech and activities approved of by the toxic combination of government, BigTechBook™, and GloboCorp® is approved,
- George R.R. Martin is still pretending he’s writing his next Game of Thrones® book,
- The leader of Iran still had a Twitter™ account while the President’s account was cancelled,
- Open borders are reality, flooding the United States with many with no functional idea of liberty,
- Firing for wrongthink is not only approved, it’s encouraged, and
- Disney®, a global company, is attempting to override the will of the people of Florida because their employees do not agree with the idea that teachers shouldn’t talk about gay sex with five-year-olds.
That’s bad enough. The good news is that not everyone is an NPC, waiting to receive the next government-approved Woke Upgrade that (spins wheel) attempts to convince you your computer is non-binary. Heck, if you’re reading this, chances are high that you make your own decisions and are skeptical of much of The Agenda.
I’d like my remains to be scattered at Disneyworld®. I don’t want to be cremated, though.
But in 2022, we have the potential for the biggest economic failure in the history of the United States. We have the possibility of a failed economy combined with a failed currency. This would bring economic chaos that would be destabilizing. In the 1930s, 20% of the American workforce was in agriculture. Now? Around 2%.
Without jobs, in a collapsing economy? That’s a lot of hungry people. A lot of homeless people.
A lot of people without hope. A lot of people who will look for a man who promises solutions. The Strong Man.
The response? That’s Friday’s post: The Strong Man, and the signposts along the way.
Excellent Long March breakdown and it started long before the Frankfurt School refugees.
Now we have a hybrid nomenklatura apparatchik rule by mandarins that is chock full of foreigners.
The impossible conditions of austerity will bring about the dictatorship of the replacement proletariat.
Bumbling Brandon is the ultimate mocking of the boomers way overdone by Dingle Barry Soetoro and his handler comrades.
Thank you. We need more ice picks.
Speaking of people wanting a strongman, I’ve been watching Servant of The People on Netflix and it is actually a very, very good mix of humor and political satire. Highly recommended. This is the 2015 Ukranian TV series put out by comedian and actor Zelenskyy before he was elected the actual President of Ukraine in a life-imitates-art moment similar to what happens in the show. In the storyline he is a idealistic high-school history teacher who goes on a rant against government corruption that is filmed by a student and goes viral on YouTube. His homeroom class then crowdfunds his elction campaign and he wins the election. The shadowy oligarchs who really control things accidentally let this all happen because they all mistakenly think he is one of the other’s puppet. Heart-warming hilarity ensues. The puppet who never actually was one cuts his strings…
The show ran for three seasons with a two hour movie thrown in there somewhere, and along the way an actual Servant of the People political party was registered as a joke / ad campaign and lo and behold Zelenskyy was actually elected by a people desperate for a hero that was like the one they saw on the screen. Not a bad bet. Say what you will about Zelenskyy, he is a total badass – leading a country amid carnage to preserve its independent identity in a phyrric victory while dodging death squads sent to kill him. If, er, when we get an American dictator, we can only hope it will be a guy as good as Zelenskyy…
https://www.netflix.com/title/80119382
Er…”pyrrhic”. Oops.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pyrrhic_victory
But, by comptemplating the word pyrrhic, I digress. Zelenskyy may be a badass, but he also has his bad side…as I suppose all strongmen do.
https://www.occrp.org/en/the-pandora-papers/pandora-papers-reveal-offshore-holdings-of-ukrainian-president-and-his-inner-circle
He still created an entertaining fantasy with Servant of the People, tho….
Zelensky is a high heel wearing, homosexual,Globalist, POS. I am being kind. Now pull up your yoga pants and adjust your pussy hat and actually try to learn something that is not presented on the pedo network called Netflix. That is all, carry on.
Well, sure, before Zelensky became the Persident of Ukraine he DID play the piano with his penis ( https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2-UiadUOrfk ) – but his support of LGBTQIXYZ+ causes has been a little, er, limp ( https://www.atlanticcouncil.org/blogs/ukrainealert/lgbtq-rights-in-ukraine-and-the-false-dawn-of-zelenskyy/ ). Being negatively cast by the “officially globalist” Atlantic Council in that article doesn’t bode well for Zelensky’s “globalist” credentials, either, but whatever.
As an aside, I think his wife is hot and his kids are cute.
https://www.standard.co.uk/insider/who-is-olena-zelenska-president-zelensky-vogue-cover-wife-ukraine-b985511.html
As for Netflix, I enjoyed their adaptation of Lost In Space a lot more than I am currently enjoying Star Trek : Picard, which I am starting to regret giving a second chance after its ridiculous first season.
(Though I will give it a watch)
I am reluctant to call anyone a hero until the story is played out . . . .
The wife and I just finished watching it. Too bad they couldn’t translate it into English. The subtitles were sometimes hard to follow.
You let Wilson off way too easy, I would put him ahead of Lincoln and FDR in the tyrant sweepstakes, unlike FDR Wilson really believed his own bullshit, making him more dangerous. His post WW1 stroke was a blessing for America.
I did. But I could have spent 4,000 words just on him. Awful, awful man.
The novelty of the Dictator in the Roman Republic was that it was power for a defined time that was laid down at the end of the emergency – and for the most part (so far as we know) the dictators went back to their normal ordinary lives and (to the best of my knowledge) did not attempt to “extend” their stay. It was only with the late Roman Republic dictatorships – first of Lucius Cornelius Sulla, then of Gaius Julius Caesar – that it moved from an specific condition based role to more of an “extended stay” to make things right (although to be noted is that Sulla surrendered power; Caesar apparently never intended to).
Well, after the Senate ordered his execution in 49 BC, what did they really expect him to do? He disappointed them by bringing a Legion of bodyguards back to Rome.
McChuck, I supposed the Senate had hoped that Pompey would win. Never ideal to place your strategy on someone without a recent history of success versus someone coming of a major continental victory tour.
Nope, if Caesar surrendered his power, he was dead. He didn’t, and he still died. But what a way to go . . . .
Crippled FDR jokes. I love it! Please never stop.
Thank you! I like to keep it topical.
The Soviet Union also had the small problem that it lost 40 million people in WWII, many of them men, to the US’s 400 thousand, and was in no shape to attack anyone, as the CIA knew…
Lenin and Stalin killed at least twice as many Soviet citizens as Hitler did.
Especially given the disparity in “special” weapons.
Anyone have an IP address from Langley?
Hahaha. I haven’t checked in forever. This is read inside the Beltway, though.
Mr. Wilder: Thank you for naming Catholic Organizations on your list of Long March Marxist usual suspects. Being raised as a pre-Vatican II Catholic, I saw the change when I started high school in 1961. The Oblates of Mary Immaculate had, for the most part, sipped the Pope John Kool-Aid and were in full lockstep with the destruction of Mother Church. By the time I graduated in 1965, the Marxist-Masonic-Jesuit cancer had metastasized, and the apostasy was pretty much complete. All that remained was the massive recruitment of pedophiles into the priesthood and now look at the Satanic Monster who runs the Vatican. The chastisement is way overdue.
I’m a lifelong Catholic, and the rot kills me. Just heartsick about the takeover in the priesthood and Vatican employees. I’m seriously considering joining a Trad Catholic church.
There are still non-Leftist Catholic segments, but so many have been swallowed by Marxism.
Well done, sir. Thank you!
I would be interested in knowing where this strong man might come from. We seem to be producing nothing but weakness in the halls of power at the moment, especially morally, intellectually, & strength of character & resolve wise).
Maybe that means this movie will have a surprise ending! 🙂
I name a name in Friday’s post. But there are many that fit the bill . . . .
“legalized Disco™, and…
He also invented McRib®. Which makes him The Wort President Ever. Well, until Jan 2021.
And just to put on my Browncoat Jayne hat and start another hi-larious chain of thought, here’s a riff on the last meme in your article, John…
https://tallahasseereports.com/2022/03/30/disney-to-eliminate-mentions-of-ladies-gentlemen-boys-and-girls/
Satanists, pure & simple.
I forgot! You are, of course, correct, sir.
Fedtrannies don’t care about pictures of gear that won’t ever be used or chatter prattle at the keyboard corral.
Now that the Long March is complete it will soon be Red Guards time and may the hard hearted win.
Not quite complete, but very, very close.
John, if you want to read more about the political rot in the U.S., I recommend “The Ordeal of Otto Otepka” by William J. Gill. Otepka was in charge of vetting proposed employees of the State Department. The book begins in 1960, just after the election of JFK, with an episode of incoming administration officials pressuring Otepka to okay a candidate he had previously rejected.
Ordered. Thank you.