Ole Remus and the Woodpile Report

http://www.woodpilereport.com/

Duty

We lost the republic long ago. Within Remus's lifetime, loyal constitutionalist patriots have gone from the majority to a tolerated minority to a designated hate group and now, presumed terrorists. Meanwhile, the collectivists—the Democrat Republican Progressive establishment—are openly consolidating their power, strutting on the national stage like Mussolini in front of a mirror, their witless minions shouting down deviations from DC's two party one-party line.

DC has taken on the classic structure of totalitarianism: feuding official fiefdoms with fuzzy and overlapping authorities, all burrowing into the formerly private lives of the populace, legal cover provided by a Byzantine tangle of laws and impenetrable codes, a form of lawlessness in itself, as it's meant to be. In this pervasive fog and fear they needn't be lawful other than by their own calculations.

Socialists cannot be and never have been bound by law, or said another way, under socialism the legality of an act is determined by its compliance with collectivist theory, retroactively where convenient, and not by a body of law that can be known in advance. The citizen is quantified, society is qualified, i.e., the citizen's actions are measured against the putative good of the "masses". In the republic now gone, society was measured in terms of the good of the citizen. The republic's sole purpose was to guarantee the citizen's liberty against all enemies, foreign and domestic. This was the Constitutional basis of the legal system, the reason for equality under the law, and the only justification for war.

But this is in the past, we are well into the collectivist 'personality cult' phase. There's no longer a question of retrieving the republic, it must be rebuilt. What lies between now and then can't be known. What is known is this: collectivists can mount an insurgency like no other, ruthless, patient and unwavering, but once successful they remain insurgents and without exception descend into a Darwinian orgy of power lust, visiting excesses on each other and the populace until the nightmare consumes the realm.

There's no need for ol' Remus to flog the best among us to do this or that in response, even if he knew what to do. Besides, they aren't the best because of what they do, they're the best because of what they are. What needs to be done flows from that so it's enough that they are what they are. They're an anonymous and nameless and timeless meritocracy with a provenance that predates the republic—they need the internet like Jefferson needed the newsreel—and they shall rise among us, the republic shall flourish anew. Just how, ol' Remus hasn't a clue, but he doesn't have to, Thomas Paines and Benjamin Franklins and Thomas Jeffersons have ever walked among us. Their time has come again.

. . . . .

"There aren't any great men. There are just great challenges you like men ordinary that circumstances to meet. Admiral William "Bull" Halsey via survivalblog.com"

. . . . .

Ol' Remus has been many things and one thing he was was a card-carrying worker in Mexico. He and anybody who's familiar with Mexico's underside will tell you nothing is what it seems, mostly because outsiders willfully misinterpret everything to their own advantage. They'll tell you of colorful poverty and curiously honorable small-time corruption and wary openness to strangers and simple food, in short, all the stuff that makes them feel right at home.

Point is, from time to time during conversations with his fellow yanquis Remus would mentally append something like this:

Look around, look closely, remember what you see. You only imagine you're looking at a people trying to achieve what we've achieved, and failing. You'd like to intervene and say they must do this or that, but stand in a different place and you'll understand you're looking at our future. You speak of what is sustainable. This is what is sustainable in this place at this time. This is one workable balance with the realities of life, not our balance perhaps, not in detail, but in kind.

We're standing in a very different place now, and it will be yet more different soon. Folks are getting, um - expedient, to strike their balance with the rapidly shifting realities of life. But be of good cheer, civil collapse isn't an unalloyed disaster in all places for all people. There's good news. The over-delicate among us will have succumbed, and succumb indelicately, largely by way of their delusions. A subset of the over-delicate will have imploded from sheer dissipation, as:

This cute little cabinet comes from a shop in La Paz. It was made entirely with hand tools. Can you believe that? I had this room built around it. I just adore it.

They're a bearable loss.

On the other hand, the career posers will go from zero tolerance to infinite tolerance between heartbeats because adapt-prepare-execute-adapt is the more viable plan, meaning when all you have is a nail everything looks like a hammer. There's a pressing need to sort things out, and until things are sorted out, ugly doesn't begin to describe the interval. Nothing focuses the mind like a life-or-death moment.

Ol' Remus believes the happiest outcome of any life-or-death dustup is to have been elsewhere. That's Plan A. He's noticed this is not a reliable strategy so he has a Plan B, namely, doing the best he can with what he has, using what he's learned. That's the adapt part of adapt-prepare-execute-adapt. Incidentally, the over-delicate, see above, include the determinedly improvident and their enablers, whose notion of adapting doesn't involve effort on their part. It means ginning up self reproach on the part of others so they'll make good their insufficiencies. They'll disappear, betimes, the unwilling and the unfit alike.

To review: unwarranted self reproach erodes whatever self confidence one has. Adapt. Learn from experience, your experience by preference. The experience of others has already been edited, and not impartially. They, like you, are the hero of their own life story.

Anyway, back to kozmik troofs. Our lesson for today is that the republic and the wealth we earned in the past few decades has fallen into the hands of fools and frauds. Doesn't matter how, the republic and its portable wealth are gone, pretty much. Self reproach is useless, so adapt, do the best you can with what you have, use what you learn .

Of wealth and the republic, the republic is the more valuable long term, that's the place to start. Remus believes we've nearly relearned to fit a building to its foundation, the foundation in this case being the Constitution. Ol' Remus notices the present squatters have taken to calling such talk terrorism. He also plans to be elsewhere when such folk are less eager to point themselves out.

The abnormality of recent decades is gone, there is no "recovery", we're in bad times and it's early yet, we've already entered a new era of scarcity and there's worse to come. But preparing should involve more than merely surviving when the future include restoring our former Constitutional unavoidable matter of getting through the intervening maelstrom, and it's right and prudent to prepare for it, but we still have our civic responsibilities, post-collapse. Damage Control is not shipbuilding.

None of this will happen if able citizens are drawn off by populist fervor and fritter away their efforts on details, as is currently the case. However satisfying small victories may be, they're still small victories, like an extra ration in the Gulags. It's time to consider historic action. With totalitarianism ascendant, and given decades of government schools, it may be the last chance.