Corporate State Tyranny

…a.k.a. Fascism is upon us.  Joel Kotkin explains how and why.

Local banks have disappeared and been replaced by online and large national financial institutions. Between 1983 and 2018, the number of banks fell from 11,000 to barely 4,000. This is not an anomaly, but a trend.

Today, a handful of giant corporations account for nearly 40 percent of the value of the Standard and Poor Index, a level of concentration unprecedented in modern history.

Alphabet, Amazon, Apple, Facebook, and Microsoft now make up 20 percent of the stock market’s total worth.

And Kotkin goes on to explain, in revolting detail, just what that means to us ordinary people.

It’s not enough to obey Big Brother and it’s not enough to love Big Brother;  now you have to do business with Big Brother, if you want to have any kind of life.

I knew things were bad… I just didn’t know how bad.  Read the whole thing;  why should I be the only one depressed?

And now, if you’ll excuse me, I’m off to the range.  I only get to move back into the apartment after lunch, so I might as well do something productive till then.

Pushing Back

Yesterday, I expressed my consternation at this little event — which took place not a mile from where I am right now, and where I drive through all the time:

In the incident, which occurred last week, BLM marchers illegally blocked a public street, trapping motorists. Such situations have happened across the nation over the past year, often resulting in violence. In the Plano video, one man emerges from his car and yells at the BLM protesters to clear the street. They not only do not clear the street, one of them also brandishes a weapon of some sort at the man. A Plano police officer looks on, does nothing to clear the street, and instead seems to side against the motorist — who is legally in the right.

Looks as though the Plano Police Chief has landed himself in the doodoo with TXAG Paxton: After reviewing the incident, our First Lawyer had this to say:

Reckon it’s time someone got fired — and I’m not talking about Paxton.

Frankly, I don’t care if you think you have to “negotiate with these people” when in fact they are breaking the fucking law.  If I’d parked my car across the intersection and refused to move it, how long do you think it would have taken for the Plano PD to have me in cuffs?  Or, if there were four of us White boys blocking the road with our cars protesting (say) the stolen election of 2020, the fuzz would have descended on us like Genghis Khan, only with better weaponry.  And if one of us had pointed something that looked like a gun — I don’t care whether it was a pepper gun, taser or toy pistol — the cops would have shot his ass dead.

And all of Plano would probably have applauded.

Let me get this straight.  While Plano is more conservative than Dallas, it’s not as conservative as the rest of Texas (thanks to the huge influx of New Yorkers, Californians, Chinese, Indians and Pakistanis into the area as we’ve become some kind of Mecca [sic]  for the Big Business flight away from, duh, California and the Northeast).  We have a Black mayor, a Black police chief, several Blacks, Chinese and Indians on the city council and school district board, and all the rest of the stuff that has allowed the hallowed “diversity” to flourish, only without any fanfare or box-ticking.

Nevertheless, Plano is still reliably conservative, and up until now, the Police Department has been too, with a strong law-and-order attitude which we citizens of Plano have supported to the hilt.

And now?  A police chief who bleats about “having to negotiate” with violent criminals?  I don’t care if the police are “caught in the middle”;  that’s their fucking job.  They are supposed to be the “thin blue line” between law-abiding citizens and criminal bandits.

Like I said, someone needs to be fired, or else the shit is really going to hit the fan.  Next time, the guy who jumps out of his car and, all by himself, shouts at protesters to clear the street, may well be carrying a handgun, or more.  (There’s a very good reason that our local gun store shelves are empty of both guns and ammunition.)  And if the cop on the scene — or his boss — aligns himself with the criminals, don’t be surprised if he’s treated like one of them, because it’s no less than he deserves.

And if the city cops are unable or unwilling to do their job, Paxton has only to unleash the state police and, gawd help us, the Texas Rangers.  We’re cool with that, I think.

This bullshit has to stop, nipped in the bud right now.  Let’s hope that Paxton gets it done, or there’s going to be a serious shit show.  Plano is not fucking Los Angeles or Chicago or New York;  we’re not even fucking Austin.  And without serious action, the powers that be are going to find that out, big time.

Juxtaposition

Very interesting piece by Max Morton at American Greatness.  One passage caught my attention in particular:

Ultimately, it doesn’t matter what country you come from, what god you worship, or what political ideology you believe in. When a man has no options, when no hope remains, when for him there is no tomorrow . . . he will fight with ferocity and fury not of this world. It is worth considering this fact—written in history from Thermopylae to the Alamo and to the Warsaw ghetto—when attempting to impose one’s will on another.

He’s talking about Afghanistan and the timeless futility of trying to achieve anything in that shithole.  But read on through to the end, when he brings it home:

If we listen to the words of the politicians and their bureaucrat handlers in Washington, we can hear the language of the imperative, “Submit,” with no post-capture options. And, if we look at the current zero-sum game of political warfare, cancel culture, and the weaponization of the Justice Department, federal law enforcement, and intelligence agencies, we can see deliberate preparations to answer traditional Americans’ “or what?” response.

But:

In reality, [our current ruling elites] are not strong enough—or smart enough—to wield the command “Submit.” So, having picked up the sword, they will watch it be taken from their hands and then used against them by their very enemy—traditional Americans, who understand there will be no tomorrow, and in whose eyes there is a fierceness, a fury, that is beyond their world. It will be a fatal miscalculation that will bring about the downfall of a cursed and failed American ruling elite.

We can only hope.

Explanation

Via Insty, I read this:

Stephen Collinson is well-known among conservatives as the most hackneyed of the hacks at CNN. The CNN Politics Twitter account promoted his latest online essay with the words “President Biden to showcase his moderate radicalism in his big congressional address.”
“Moderate radicalism”? Doesn’t that make about as much sense as “quiet loudness”?

Well, no.  Basically, “moderate radicalism” is when radical ideas and positions (i.e. extreme leftwing, in this case) are talked about and explored, but there are no actions associated with the activity.  Here’s an example:

“Racial equity is going to be our social goal and policy”  —  moderate radicalism.  Then there’s this:

“Racial equity is going to be our social goal and policy, and anyone not supporting it will be sent to reeducation camps”  — that’s pure (immoderate) radicalism.

Just don’t kid yourself that the latter is an impossibility in these here United States.

Never forget that socialists, of whatever variant, are utterly convinced of the rightness and purity of their ideas, and that opponents thereof are evil and should be suppressed, by force if necessary.

Deceit And Coverup

Via Insty comes this latest bastardy, in Eureka MO just west of St. Louis:

Faced with complaints from parents about the indoctrination of children, an official in Rockwood School District, Missouri, instructed teachers to create two sets of curriculum: a false one to share with parents, and then the real set of curriculum, focused on topics like activism and privilege.

I should point out that the foul “educator” who sent out this loathsome message is, like First Lady Jill Biden, a Doctor in Education (EdD).

And the next time someone tells me that homeschooling is wrong for children, I’m going to punch them in the face.