Pakistan beats New Zealand in World Cup Cricket.
I do not understand cricket (My knowledge is almost entirely derived from Lagaan) but I gather this is a big deal. It even exceeds America's elections (yesterday) in importance.
New Zealand only scored 152-4 with 20 overs against Pakistan's 153-3 with 19.1 overs. I don't understand a score that requires three different metrics, but the numbers are close so I imagine this was very exciting to people who understand what is going on.
Cricket is a perfect metaphor for America's elections. Hardly anyone (perhaps no one) understands what is really going on, but we can see it all is sufficiently close that it's exciting. Last night I spoke on WRFH radio about the election returns and what they mean. The returns are close, but how to interpret? The people have spoken? Everyone is confused? Cheating?
My primary point in the radio interview was that battles over the institutional framework are far more important than these elections. My two examples were control over the teacher training in schools of higher ed and the role of the federal bureaucracy in making law. Teacher training was first taken over by Progressives in the the early 1900s, and subsequently by cultural Marxists. As a result, the government education system is populated by leftists. Meanwhile, the unelected and largely unchecked federal bureaucracy makes most of our laws via regulation.
Electing new officials solves this iff they are willing to fight these things to the death. In general, that does not describe Republicans (nor Democrats). It makes a difference which party wins, because they do legislate, but the big picture is elsewhere. It's like cricket, maybe - it is part of the score, but it's probably the overs or the unders or the wickets or something...not the main part of the score.
And regardless, the only political value that matters is liberty, and that is ultimately up to us individuals and no one else.
I missed blogging on Joe Biden's* infamous Philadelphia speech, in which he declared half of the American public fascists, just as I'll miss his DC speech tonight. The man is clearly suffering from dementia, and whatever it is they pump into him for these appearances seems to enrage him, although a friend of mine says demonic possession ought not be ruled out. (Frankly, I'm not sure there's any fundamental difference, from the country's perspective.) Besides, we already know what this staged event is about; the above
Washington Post "breaking news" headline tells us what we are
supposed to "think." An insane drug-abusing nudist-activist leftist either broke into or was invited into the Pelosi household hit and Paul Pelosi with a hammer while police officers watched, and therefore all of us who point to all the evidence that the 2020 election involved substantial cheating are "threats to democracy and safety."
So... a party with executive power that controls the bureaucracy, demonization of all who dissent from the party line as literal enemies, suppression and censorship, a proto-KGB... we do seem to have the early stages of Soviet-style governance developing. These sorts of things are foreign to most Americans' experiences, and it is hard for people to wrap their heads around unless they experience it directly. But it is remarkably dangerous and unchecked it leads to totalitarianism. And like the Soviet Union, we are also on the path to economic disaster, by committing to serious energy shortages, fiscal insanity, and monetary chaos. Oil and gas investment is nearly zero, interest payments on the federal debt are on track to surpass defense spending this year, and the Federal Reserve is now taking losses, a rare thing, and prospects for reversing that are poor. Welcome to the USSR.
I have no predictions for the upcoming elections. It certainly appears that the Democrats are on track for a crushing electoral defeat (good grief, they are so desperate they are running a brain-damaged man for Senate in Pennsylvania!) but then there's the astonishing lack of security and control over ballots and vote tabulation that we now have. Things that are now considered "best practices" by Democrats -- no ID, mass mailings of unsecured ballots, vote harvesting, acceptance of cast ballots that arrive after the election is over, etc. -- were the kinds of things that would be obvious attempts to cheat for anyone serious about an honest election... and would be violations of law under the training I received and oath I took as an
Election Judge.
If the Republicans take both houses of Congress, I'm not sure I expect much. I'm not sure whether enough of them have awakened to the danger we face. The last time the Republican Party held both houses, they also held the Presidency, and Paul Ryan and Mitch McConnell made sure they
didn't do much of anything, other than block President Trump. With Brandon in the White House, they have a ready-made excuse to accomplish nothing. It would still be desirable since the it would block the Democrat Party from passing terrible laws, it won't reverse our headlong charge toward totalitarianism, just slow it. And left won't sit by, but will raise hell and plot revenge for when they return to power. That's one possibility.
A better outcome would be that Republicans begin by impeaching and convicting as many administration officials as they can, including Brandon himself. They had better understand we are in a fight for our lives and liberty, and if we lose, we lose them.
* He wasn't really elected and he's not the real President.
