Signs Of The Times

Yesterday I referred to the US Marines’ humiliation by the by the UK Marines in a major military game in the Mojave Desert—the US side having been forced to surrender only half way through, with UK media crowing that their side had “dominated” the US Marines. That’s not showing much respect for the storied Marines, but it betokens a military in serious decline. You can read more about that debacle here, if you’re interested: The Royal Marines defeat the US Marines at the 'Battle of the Mojave Desert'. You won’t read about it most anywhere else.

You can imagine that the US military has some work to do to get back up to speed, perhaps starting with the Marines, who are usually our go-to service branch in a crisis that requires boots on the ground. You might imagine that, but if so you probably wouldn’t imagine that this major effort would begin like this:

Marine Corps Commandant Blames Vaccine Disinformation For Possibility of Losing 12,500 Troops From Marine Corp Ranks

Losing 12,500 trained troops is bad enough, in a world that seems to be getting more dangerous all the time, while the US military descends into wokeness. But then you have the Marine Commandant blaming this failure of the Marine Corps on “disinformation”. Meaning, the troops the Marines are losing—as well, no doubt, as those got shot up only under great pressure from the top—are simply stupid. They fell for “disinformation”. I can’t think of a better way at a worse time to undermine morale. But this is the Zhou regime.

One of my regular refrains for months now has been, “People are catching on.” They’re no longer fooled by the MSM, they’re looking around at what’s going on, and they’re unhappy and upset.

Andrea Widburg, who wrote the article about the Marines being wasted in the desert has an interesting article today that is very much in the same vein—people are catching on. The title references a Tucker monologue—which I’ll get to, briefly—but what caught my eye initially was the anecdotal evidence that Widburg presents. OK, anecdotal data isn’t “science” in the strict sense, but only a fool ignores it. In fact, anecdotal evidence is usually where real science begins—an observer notices something that’s out of the ordinary, that demands and explanation. Here’s the link to the article: 

Must-see Tucker Carlson video about the cause of America's woes

And here are a few excerpts, which mirror that idea that ordinary people are getting woke—but in a distinctly normal and unwoke fashion:

People are beginning to realize that something is wrong with America's ruling class, ... I'm talking about people who want nothing to do with politics or people living in prosperous leftist enclaves who haven't been forced to think about what's happening to less affluent Americans. ...

Regarding the fact that ordinary, apolitical, non-political, or reflexively Democrat people are waking up, I have two brief anecdotes. ...

The other day, I spoke with an older friend of mine who is studiously apolitical. Watching the news depresses her, so she is truly disengaged from the American political scene. Nevertheless, when I spoke with her the other day — and our conversation usually revolves around the weather, dogs, and other anodyne subjects — she suddenly said to me, "You know, I have the very strong feeling when I look around that America is a nation in decline." She may not watch the news, but she feels the zeitgeist.

Today, I talked to a young friend of mine, the product of a very liberal college who works at a successful company filled with hardworking, very leftist people. She's tried to accept the social and political shibboleths of her age and class, but she confessed to me that she doesn't believe in transgenderism, and she's getting very afraid of how censorious Democrats and progressives are against anyone who doesn't agree with them. "They're really not nice people. Conservatives are nicer." This young woman, who's remained silent in the past both because she wanted to avoid politics and because she didn't want to be on the receiving end of cancel culture, has decided that it's time to step up and start pushing back because "if it's bad now, I don't even want to think about how bad it will be later if we don't stop them." She too feels the zeitgeist.

Exactly. People are catching on. What smacks them upside the head may vary from one to another, but the result is the same because those smacks all came from the same source.

And along those lines and the common source of the smacks upside the head that relatively normal people are experiencing on a daily basis, here’s the part of Tucker’s monologue that jumped out at me. It’s really just a very brief sentence or two, but it sums up the mentality of the Ruling Class (starting just past the 5:00 mark):

The ideologues are in control, and that's a huge problem for the rest of us. It's a problem because ideologues have no interest in the lives of actual human beings. Ideologues care only about their theories, about the bright new future they're building. Human beings are just speed bumps on the road to Utopia. So it's not surprising that when ideologues take over a society--any society, in any country, at any point throughout history--life always get much worse for most people. Borders fall, crime rises, schools collapse, inflation gets out of control ...

Sound familiar? Oh, and speaking of inflation:

Producer Prices Rose 8.6 Percent In One Year As Biden Administration Scoffs At Inflation

Producer prices rise 8.6%, matching September record high

I want to personally guarantee you—no matter what the smack upside the head that gets people upset, one thing that will definitely get their attention and will make it all much worse is: inflation.

Continuing, Salena Zito discusses where this all could lead in very practical terms, using the very major state of Pennsylvania as an example:

Pennsylvania Leapt Further Right on Election Night

Republicans made gains in Pennsylvania in keeping with trends in Virginia and New Jersey that reflected Democrats' overreach.

What Zito describes is that the GOP made major gains statewide, including not just the disenchanted and unwoke working classes in Rust Belt areas, but also the more woke suburban areas:

In the collar counties surrounding Philadelphia, voters echoed the same dissatisfaction with Democrats that was displayed in the surprising results in neighboring New Jersey. This corrected some of the suburban losses that Republicans had experienced in Philly during the Trump years. In Bucks County, where Republicans have struggled to hold any local elected office in the last four years, they kept the district attorney’s office in their column and picked up offices for sheriff and prothonotary. In Chester, where Republicans became extinct in row offices four years ago, the races were still close to call.

Here in Erie, a critically important bellwether county for next year’s high-profile races for state governorship and the U.S. House and Senate, voters chose the Republican candidate for county executive in a seat that has been held by Republicans only twice since 1978.

People are catching on.