But then they sent me away to teach me how to be sensible
Logical, oh, responsible, practical
Then they showed me a world where I could be so dependable
Oh, clinical, oh, intellectual, cynical
There are times when all the world's asleep
The questions run too deep
For such a simple man
Won't you please, please tell me what we've learned?
I know it sounds absurd
Please tell me who I am
~ The Logical Song, Supertramp, 1979
This essay has a theme song. It is “The Logical Song” by the group “Supertramp.” Somewhere in Ohio I have the album on which this song was released, on vinyl. Whee.
Here is a link to see how YouTube and Substackistan are getting along:
On the Android phone version of the Substack app, in Notes, the YouTube links don’t display the video preview image. Seems to work for me here in the web version of the essay composition screen on my laptop, so there’s that. For the record, that is not the cover art from the album “Breakfast in America,” that I own. The prison cell window grating is an innovation.
Yesterday’s Gone
Yesterday someone posted on Twitter “make it make sense.” It was one of my political commentary follows, not a mutual. There’s been some rhizomatic consciousness about this topic, inspired by the writings of
Demi Pietchell. The desire to have it all make sense is understandable, but currently out of reach. The people who have meaningful control over events don’t want you to feel like you have an understanding. They very much want you to be off balance, out of kilter, and subject to fits of emotion.It wasn’t that way in the 1990s, as you may recall if you were alive at the time. In the 1997 film “Men in Black,” agent Kay says, “Humans for the most part don’t have a clue. They don’t want one or need one neither. They’re happy. They think they have a good bead on things.” Which was regarded by the imaginary agency portrayed in the film as a desirable state of affairs. They wanted the public complacent and largely sleeping.
It wasn’t that way for me, of course. I had been shown the iron fist beneath the velvet glove back in 1991. It’s not fruitful to review those facts. Suffice it to say that when two persons are perp walked in handcuffs in their office and then made to wait in an unmarked patrol car while the media rush to the vicinity of the jail in order to have cameramen walk backwards while the same two men are perp walked to the jail - which has a fully operational drive up enclosure for secure delivery of actually dangerous criminals, it lends a certain clarity to your thinking. It’s important not to get too upset about events from thirty-three years ago.
Those days are gone. In many ways, I’m very glad that they are gone, and I don’t want to go back to those times. I know that the things we are experiencing now were fully planned in those days. Those days led inexorably to these days. In fact, about the time the aforementioned film came out, a business associate was explaining to me that the people he knew involved in certain three-letter agencies had told him that they didn’t expect to be able to retain control past 2018. That happened to jive closely with one of the expectations disclosed privately to me by Tim Cohen, the author of a very thoroughly researched book The AntiChrist and a Cup of Tea indicating that 2019 would be the time of the big events with “the beast” making itself known. Fast forward to event 201, the world military games in Wuhan, and the Bergoglio person placing an abomination in the church of St. Mary in Rome, and the picture starts to come into focus.
You Don’t Like It
I can tell. You’re very uncomfortable with the idea of things happening about which you have no control, to which you are expected to react in various ways, and none of it being articulated so that you can make sense of it. You want to have a good bead on things.
You may want to return to a condition of complacency. Perhaps you want the problems in the world to disappear behind what author Douglas Adams calls a “somebody else’s problem” probability field. You’ve gotten used to the idea that “all that stuff” about policies foreign and domestic, about setting of interest rates, about how much aggravation you’ll be asked to endure at the airport, about which nations the USA military might be at war with, which foreign leaders might be targets of assassination, and the fine details of the whichness of what are the problems of people who live in and around the District of Corruption.
Some of you are aware that those people are horrifyingly corrupt, venal, and capricious. They get into positions of power in congress or the bureaucracies and they accumulate inordinate amounts of wealth. Nancy Pelosi is worth over a hundred million dollars and she certainly didn’t get that way from her annual congressional salary. But many people who have the awareness of these aspects of the situation still don’t mind, because they are willing to let others choose for them as long as they can go on living away from it all and not be bothered.
Sadly, there are even people, like the authoritarian prima donna who was in charge of YouTube during the lockdowns, who took the vaxxajabs and got the cancer and died. These are people who won’t ever be disobedient because they believe that the order of society demands that they be willing to die for that order. Socrates was a progenitor of this sort of thinking. He was offered escape, but he willingly drank the hemlock poison. Why? Because he believed that the city-state of Athens, “the polis” owned the life of Socrates and that being obedient to the order of execution was essential to his own political philosophy. You should read about what he believed, I think, or at least what Plato was willing to tell us of what Socrates believed, in order to understand a bit about the mess you’re in.
Exempli gratia
Huh? Yes, I do like to speak a bit of Latin. It has been around for 2750 years or more, and a good bit of Christendom was built on the remains of Roman civilisation. Exempli is Latin for “example.” Gratia is Latin for “by the grace of God.” You see it abbreviated “e.g.” and after a while you understand that an example is being given. You might also think of it as “a free example.” An example with no obligation on you for receiving it. A freebie.
Let’s get right into it, shall we? You have no idea what happened last month. You weren’t told, and there were no plans to tell you. But the word filters out, now, because the system is utterly broken, devoid of redeeming qualities, and good people are spreading the news. The image below comes from the Twitter account of representative Clay Higgins, some guy in congress.
See? It’s actually worse than you imagine. Not only don’t you know what happened last month, but also the people who purport to be your representatives in congress having (again merely purported) oversight over homeland insecurity, the feral bureau of investigation, and other “intelligence” agencies not only don’t know, but also admit that they will never know. They won’t know in any meaningful certainty whether Thomas Crooks was the person whose body was taken from that roof, whether Crooks was a shooter, whether gunshot residue appears on either hand of said alleged shooter, whether any of the shell casings from the rifle allegedly used in the shooting were recovered, whether the bullets are a ballistics match for that rifle, or anything else. The people who are tasked with overseeing the gooferment don’t know and cannot ever come to know, because the people responsible for the events last month are also in charge of investigating those events. Despite the alleged “rule of law” and the fact of an ongoing congressional investigation at the time the order was given to destroy the evidence atop the building where the alleged shooter allegedly fired the alleged rifle at the two-term elected president of the United States, all that evidence was destroyed.
It may become possible to find out what was ordered, and by whom, in the post-collapse scenarios that may arise. We found out quite a lot of things after the Soviet Union collapsed in late 1991. For one thing, my friends Richard and Anna Ebeling were able to go to Moscow in 1993, bring in a photocopier, and copy essentially all of the private papers of Ludwig von Mises.
Am I digressing? Sure, and I do it very well indeed. But it is a fruitful and purposeful digression. So let’s get into it.
Working our way backward from 1993, all the papers of economist, author, and professor Ludwig von Mises were in the state archives in Moscow. Why? Well, they were brought to Moscow inside a rail car in 1945. Why? Well, there was a train full of really interesting things in Berlin when the Soviet armies marched in and began raping all the women, butchering the men they could find, and doing other atrocities, as is the tradition of conquering armies recently come over a thousand miles of territory recently conquered (1941-45) by the enemy in whose capital they were now. Learn more by looking up “European continental siege warfare.” I won’t say there are rules, but there are expectations.
We return to our question “why” because various treasures of the Third Reich were there in Berlin in various rail cars. So it makes sense that they were all taken away to the Soviet Union. Looking a little further back we find the events of the anschluss in the third month of 1938 when the German military marched in, unopposed, to Vienna. Where a guy who knew some important facts about economics was living, working, and teaching. That guy, Ludwig von Mises, had fled through Switzerland and headed for New York city. The Nazis saw fit to gather up every single thing he had left behind, including every book in which he had pencilled a few marginal notes, and pack it into a rail box car. Which they parked near one of their institutes in Berlin and kept guarded all through the war.
Going back a little bit further, to the eleventh month of 1923, we find Ludwig standing on a street corner at midnight awaiting a visit from Joseph Schumpeter, the minister of the exchequer or whatever the Austro Hungarian Empire called the guy in charge of government finances. Schumpeter had sent von Mises a telegram asking for him to help solve the inflation problem, then running about 50,000% per annum in Austria, and quite a lot higher in the Weimar republic of Germany.
As the story goes, Ludwig received the telegram and the messenger stood there. A reply had been paid for, so von Mises sent a reply, “Are you serious? You really want me to tell you how to end inflation in the empire?” Or words to that same effect. The telegram messenger went away. A little later the same messenger came back with a confirmation. So Ludwig arranged the rendezvous, looking briefly at a map of Vienna to be sure of the address.
As the bells of a nearby church rang out the midnight hour and various monks arose to pray compline, there stood von Mises in a dashing hamburg, trench coat, and polished shoes. Out of the mist came the roar of motorcycles and an official, flag-bearing limousine. The back door opened and an underling got out to gesture to Ludwig to get in the car. There was a loud noise coming from a big building nearby. “Cha-chunk. Cha-chunk” Very bass. Very obtrusive.
Shaking his head, Ludwig gestured with his gloved hand that the minister should join him just there at the corner, under the light. The underling conveyed this message with some words, and Schumpeter got himself out of the limo and came over.
“What’s this about,” Joseph asks.
“Do you hear that noise?” inquired Ludwig.
“Yes.”
“If you want to end inflation, make that noise stop.” Ludwig gave these instructions and turned on his heel and walked away.
The sound was coming from the government printing offices. They were toiling all night, as they had been since 1919, printing the national currency. Printing and printing and printing. In the Weimar republic I happen to know, having seen in person thanks to my friend Bernard von NotHaus, a trillion reichsmark note, they were in such a hurry to print money that they only put ink on one side of the paper.
In 1919 it cost 12 marks to buy an ounce of silver. In the 11th month of 1923, when Hitler was having a merry time with a beer hall putsch in Munich, it was on the order of a trillion seven hundred fifty billion marks to buy an ounce of silver. The silver had not changed. The reichsmark had lost most of its value.
Some years after what we denominate “world war two” Ludwig would publish Human Action which goes over the essence of Austrian economics. If you want to understand the nature of free people living and working with free market economies, you should read it. If you don’t like the rather dry and academic prose in it, carefully written in English by a man who spoke German like a native of Austria, you might try the works of Murray Rothbard.
Rothbard was a careful and intelligent student of von Mises who wrote a great deal about interest rates, economics, the flaws in the Reagan administration’s policies, and other topics. What Has the Government Done to Our Money would be a useful place to start. There is an entire Ludwig von Mises Institute in Auburn, Alabama, thanks to my friend Lew Rockwell and others. I used to frequent their “Mises circle” events in Colorado Springs and in Houston. Back in the day, I was a donor to the cause. Mises.org has all the von Mises, all the Rothbard, all of the Hoppe, Bylund, and Huelsmann essays you could possibly want, for free. So go spend a few happy hours understanding how things ought to be.
Rothbard is noteworthy as well for some of his essays on political philosophy. It is said that he once conceived of a button and asked his audience if they would push the button. The effect of pushing the button would be to instantly eliminate all the government regulations in existence, everywhere in the world, and all the government agencies as well. If you are really for freedom, you would push that button so hard it would blister your thumb, he said. If you could abolish the state, you should.
Thinking about tomorrow
No, I don’t have any intention of making it make sense. As you may be able to deduce from the example I gave, and from recent events since 2019, the people who have meaningful control over the United States government don’t actually care what you think is going on. If you believe that Joe Biden as president of the United States is in charge of the government, you should probably go watch television or play video games. Or read a lot of books for a few years and come back to this topic later.
Joe Biden is not running things. It was the secretary of defence who ordered a bunch of warships, a missile submarine, and four thousand troops to the Middle East recently. Kamala Harris is not only not running things, she is amusingly running for office without giving interviews, without saying anything meaningful in her speeches, without announcing any firm policy commitments. This coming week the Democrats will have their convention in Chicago, as they did in 1968 after the murders of Martin Luther King, Jr., in Memphis and Robert F. Kennedy in California that same year. Whether the closing act is a Harris Walz or some other sort of dance, I have no way of knowing at this stage, and don’t really care.
The people who have the real power don’t mind if you vote. They don’t intend to count your vote even if they hold an election in November 2024. They expect to be able to purloin a “victory” in much the way they did in 2020. If that seems impossible, they will orchestrate a set of events, such as the nuclear annihilation of a few cities here and there, and claim that the “continuation of government” executive orders are in effect, so no election is going to take place.
I believe they would really like it if you were to rise up in anger and rebellion. Attempts to overthrow the government at this point are going to be met with excruciating cruelty. People will be slaughtered. Demonstrators who don’t bring tools for self-defence will be rounded up and either executed or sent to death camps. A few will be tortured, as the “January 6” prisoners have been tortured, and some of those will be released as object lessons for the rest of us. Efforts will be made to go door to door and search every home for contraband.
When I was younger I worked with a scientist and radar engineering expert on a “small business innovative research” contract. The company I worked for, Space Services Inc. of America, was awarded $50,000 to thoroughly describe a design for a “bi-static satellite radar system.” I happen to know that it was capable of seeing in high resolution everything underground down to about a kilometer depth in everything from dirt to limestone. Only about a foot of granite is sufficient to stop the imaging, or a couple inches of lead.
So if you think the people who really want to run things aren’t able to see what’s going on under your house where you’ve carefully dug a hiding place, I would say, “Maybe.” Maybe if the concrete included a lot of granite aggregate. Maybe if there is a whole lot of rebar in your foundation. Maybe if you put some lead ceiling tiles in your hidden underground sanctum. But it would not be a good way to bet. If they really want what you have, they are very likely quite certain to know what you have, exactly where to look, and how to get into those places. Remember that once they’ve killed everyone in your home, they will have plenty of time to break through walls and floors and what have you.
Think about tomorrow. Think about your family. Think about how little meaningful privacy you have with a cell phone that rats out everything said near it to various advertisers.
Should you resist tyranny? Yes, of course you should.
Should you refuse to comply with orders to be jabbed with poisons? Yes, of course you should.
Should you expect to live free in a major city on any of the coasts in the USA? No, you should not.
Should you make a sincere effort to use open source operating systems and software, learn cryptography tools, and keep your own keys? Yes. Should you use free market money and start local groups to organise your friends and neighbours, as I have written in numerous essays for the last eighteen months, on this Substack? Why, yes you should.
If you expect to win your freedom by voting, you are not keeping up with current events. If you expect to win a rebellion by charging the barricades in the next six months, wherever those barricades happen to be, you are probably delusional. And if you want to be free, you need to pray.
God wants you to be free. God wants you and your family to be happy. God sent His son to purchase for us the rewards of eternal salvation. God has plans for you, and for me, and for all of us.
So don’t, as we used to say, “go off half cocked” which was a turn of phrase back when everyone in the country was part of a gun owning culture that valued gun safety. Keep your powder dry. May your aim never waver. Aim small miss small. Follow me for more recipes.
You choose
I don’t tell you who you are. “Dude, I don’t even know you.”
You choose. You have choices to take. You can be the person you choose to be. Maybe you won’t be very good at being that person when you first get started. Maybe it will take some time, some experiences, some practice. But you can be whomsoever you choose to be.
You don’t need me to tell you what to do. You can find out what God wants you to do by asking God. You can find out what you need to know by asking for guidance. God loves you and wants you to be happy. So if you ask, if you invite God to guide you, you will be guided. What will that look like? I don’t know. I think it is different for different people.
What do you really want? Ask for what you want in prayer. God knows what is in your heart, but God also respects you having privacy because God wants you to grow and change and become powerful, or you wouldn’t be here. God wants you to love God as God loves you, so asking for what you really want, being in communication with God, is a great thing.
Jesus taught his disciples that there are three rules, all the rest of the prophets and the laws are commentary. The rules are: love yourself, love your neighbour, and love God with your whole heart, your whole soul, your whole energy.
If you want the things I mention in this prayer, then pray along with me. If you don’t want, or don’t understand, some parts, then leave those out. If you are in agreement and just want to say “amen,” that works, too. And if you have other things not listed, do thou pray. God hears you.
Eternal Father, please help us to free the slaves, stop the wars, end the tyranny of the state and the state of tyranny, cast out all demons, translate the Gospels into every language, care for the young and the old, the sick and the dying, with dignity and respect, out of a place of humility, and carry the Gospels to the farthest star in every direction and all souls in between. Please help with guidance, resources, ingenuity, endurance, fortitude, and patience. Please show us the little fires so we may pass by them. Please bring love into our lives so we remember what we have to live for. In the name of Jesus Christ we pray. God’s will be done. Amen.
That’s all I’ve got for today. Come back next time when I have something new. Or old.
Beautifully written! I endorse this message. "If thou seest the oppression of the poor, and violent perverting of judgment and justice in a province, marvel not at the matter: for he that is higher than the highest regardeth; and there be higher than they." Ecclesiastes 5:8 (KJV)
Truth, well written. I hope this spreads far and wide. Wonderful prayer as well. Salute.