Mr. Z at his web site posted a lovely graphic of the Hammer and Sickle being raised at the Capitol and I examined that, just a few short days ago, and came up with the following:
What I love is I can give a Leftist back the exact, same thing they have been wanting for years... so often have I heard it and you have too... and yet when a Leftist criticizes Americans coming out to protest taxation, the phrase is so simple and the cognitive dissonance is so profound:
"The people, united, will never be defeated."
Sucks to be on the pointy end of that, I bet.
I was, of course, referencing Tea Parties which the Left is ever so ready to declare racist, hate speech and any number of other slanders. Of course I see them as an organic outgrowth of the basic culture of the Nation without respect to any race, religion or other external artifact. Remember for all those lovely Leftist protests, they need months to get ready, build costumes and so vent their spleen that it can sit and wait for awhile. Regular Americans like to get to the point and make it, already. And repeatedly. Until they get fed up with demonstrating... the Left always wants that but never seems to get it. Now that it is happening under their noses, they ignore it, speak against it and take the position of the ancien regime. Strange that they forget what happens to the ancien regime, but then the Left is lacking in critical historical analysis that goes beyond Marx, so their cozying up to a power structure they have helped decay is really just desserts and all that.
After that comment I left this one, which is a bit more to the point of things:
"The FFT, remember, doesn't say that information moves with breathtaking speed these days. (Everyone knows that!) The FFT says that people are comfortable processing that information with what seems like breathtaking speed." - Mickey Kaus
As things change faster, people adapt to it faster, thus the cycle time of events compresses. In the old Eastern Bloc it was 9 years for Poland to get out from under the USSR, 9 months for East Germany, 9 weeks for Hungary, 9 days for Czechoslovakia, and Romania pretty near imploded in no time at all...as we grew accustomed to the idea that Eastern Europe could throw off totalitarian communism, it did so faster and faster.
So if we take a look at how our last revolution went... from the Stamp Act of 1765 to the Boston Tea Party 1773: 6 years. Then from Tea Party to Bunker Hill: 2 years. To Revolution from that: 1 year. Then 7 years of fighting, with 5 years of nearly losing it under the Confederation.
So if the first Tea Party of last month is the start, applying the FFT: 6 months to the real turning point, or August. October for conflict. November for Declaration. JUN 2010 victory. NOV 2010 nearly losing it all. Then JAN 2011 a new accord.
I doubt it will happen just like that... but the Feiler Faster Thesis gets us very used to change being compressed and since we are used to that it does get compressed. The American experience dragged on in the old days... we get things done more rapidly now. And then somewhere around 2029-30 we do it all over again, but faster.
Let's just try to keep the body count down this time around... 10% dead and 15% fled from last time and this time that 15% has nowhere to go. Not good.
All spelling errors, error in dates, etc. are in the original and left that way, but highlighting by bolding is mine.
Take the previous US experience and start swapping Years for Months, Months for Weeks and Weeks for Days and you start to get the idea of how the Feiler Faster Thesis (FFT) works. While not explicitly stated, I have a somewhat different working concept of the FFT than does Mr. Kaus or Feiler himself and Mr. Z asked about that and I did respond:
Mr. Z - Feiler Faster Thesis.
It is a derivative of Moore's Law addressing the doubling of circuits per given space of circuit board every 18 months at the same cost, and Metcalf's Law for network size and node contribution making the entire system value for information equal to the square of the number of nodes that contribute. Put increased processing power per given time plus more nodes in the network and individuals now adapt far faster to new information than ever before. Thus time for change evaluation compresses by nearly an order of magnitude.
Not only are things changing faster, but we are adapting faster and events get compressed because of this.
Our feeling of a world rushing by us is the Feiler Faster Thesis at work, but that is, itself, depending on two other movers that are scale based: Moore's Law and Metcalf's Law. The former was a forward derived concept from Gordon Moore, and has been backwards analyzed by Raymond Kurzweil, and the latter laterally derived nearly at the same time as Mr. Metcalf by James Burke. To those unfamiliar with these gentlemen, Kurzweil and Burke are the more deeply informative of how information grows and effects society over time via sheer growth via exponents (Kurzweil) and connectivity for creating new cultural paradigms (Burke).
Now the modern Left is stuck in a rut: it is expounding on 19th century ideas in the 21st century and has expounded on why they are 'right' for so long that it is expected that they would have had an ideological programmatic backing for their beliefs. Once elected those representing the Left have demonstrated that this is not the case, as seen by the grab-bag of programs, payoffs, and corrupt politicians now parading on a daily basis to decry the mess that they have created and attempt to shift blame to anyone but themselves. By creating an atmosphere of 'This is Bush's Fault' the Left has glossed over the Democratic control of Congress during two sessions during Bush's term, thus leaving him with only a political election cycle congress and a lame duck congress under theoretical Republican control. There was no serious de-regulation during that period of time, and yet the Leftist echo chamber incites that there was... while, in fact, the regulations put in during the Clinton era remained in place and as corrosive today as they were when put in. Those, themselves, derive from the idiotic Community Re-investment Act during the end of the Carter Administration. None of those regulations have been repealed and, indeed, it was Democrats who castigated regulators for trying to bring some fiscal sanity to government backed enterprises Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. Those two are *staffed* by political apparatchiks with their own agendas and both have lobbied Congress... which really ought to violate some law for those agencies utilizing the backing of the federal government's funds.
Our funds.
Taken from the US citizenry by taxation.
The Left has only one solution to any problem: spend like hell and deny that debts will ever come due, claim anyone who is trying to perform fiscally sane oversight is 'racist' or 'interfering' and then try to shift blame for the fallout of those insane schemes on others. Well after having control of Congress for four out of eight years, and complaining about the President and saying how it was all done 'wrong', what are the plans of the entire Left now seen?
Spend like drunken sailors and complain that there isn't enough grog to vomit up.
What the Left hasn't gotten used to is the modern world, although they do form lovely 'real world' echo chambers devoid of contrast and dulled to heartburn anger on a constant basis. Critical thinking, programmatics and addressing actual economic problems instead of false ones (health care, global warming, mortgage defaults, etc.), and when the data shows that previous social programs (social security, health care, poorly backed loans by government mandate, etc.) are bankrupting the system and destroying the wealth of the Nation and its citizenry how does the Left respond?
Spend more.
Surely money is the answer, right?
Yet if money were an answer to anything, it would be education. For all that poor Johnny couldn't read in the late 1950's and the hundreds of billions put into education, poor Johnny is reading at the exact, same rate TODAY as he was back in the '50s. This means that education is not a money influenced system beyond the absolute, bare essentials, and anything else layered on it (sexual education, mandatory skills tests, etc.) have not helped the system one little bit. No matter how much you pay teachers, they are just as effective as their forebearers in little red schoolhouses having to teach multiple generations simultaneously. No, scratch that, they are LESS effective as those teachers could multi-task, deal with a diverse class population and still be effective in a wide spectrum of age groups SIMULTANEOUSLY. And yet the answer to poor reading skills is always more money, as we do not want to address the fact that education is not amenable to mere dollars, yet it assuages our feelings that we are 'doing something', even when it is not doing any good at all.
Now raise your hand if the last 8 years have felt more like, say, 20... ok, good enough.
I came down with a serious problem during this time span and when my mind went fuzzy in 2004 and started to re-gel back in 2006 it *still* felt like that to me, and I had spent a couple of years 'out of the loop'. And politics had gone loopy. That feeling of time compression is the FFT at work: you adjust so much faster to so much more that it all feels much, much longer. The reason that feels that way is that you are far more productive and can do so much more in that same space of time that, even living the same life span as your parents (you will live longer, save for a societal collapse) you are packing in far more in the way of living than they did by experience. And when you get an additional 14% of your life devoted in your 'declining years' when you are far more physically fit than any forebearer of yours EVER you gain a different perspective on life. Europeans may have shorter working time spans, but you feel as if your life is far more exciting, interesting and jam packed full of living that you now feel you live a better life even without lots of free time.
In politics this means that 8 years of protests, whining, complaining, finger pointing, name calling, etc. now feels closer to twice that time-span if not three times it. Any political movement that does not devote time to putting down programmatics and, instead, reverts to infantile name calling and finger pointing and saying how bad those in power are will get and are getting a rude awakening when handed the actual reigns of power. They aren't ready for them. By expending all that vitriol to create no better social concept, and just attack what is, when those on the Left get to power they have only one answer to ANYTHING: spend more. Promise the heaven, the earth, good health care, lower taxes, more sunshine, less rain, always a rainbow in every kitchen, but if you don't spend any time building up the necessary mechanisms to CREATE anything, these are all destructive no matter how well intentioned and you get the feeling that most of these are not well intentioned at all.
As unfair as it may seem, the FFT is where the power is holding: in change and perception of it. A man like Barack Obama does not have the deep family ties of a JFK nor the political acumen to do enough wheeling and dealing to even land a cushy Senatorial spot for one of the Kennedy clan in NY. He does not have any political clout, beyond trying to incite his backers to being a mob, and yet THEIR expectation is based on the FFT. Two months in feels like two years ALREADY and the time compression of events is increasing, not decreasing. Even while others have pointed out that this is all a 'scheme' by the Left to break America, it takes nothing more than a man without any idea of what government is or having any skills of internal political diplomacy to get you here. The one with the skeletons in closets that are known? That is the Clintonites: they know how to use those, and those bits of knowledge are not open to Barack Obama. Wouldn't help him as he does not have the backstabbing skill of the Clintonites to actually use 'dirty little secrets'. They know they are looking out for #1 who is not the President, no matter how many Clintonites are around President Obama, they cannot use the firepower of the Clintons as that takes skill, cunning and deceptive capability beyond Obama's reach.
What happens when an absolute political neophyte gets into power during times of trouble?
Ever read any histories of the 30 Years War? Take any young Prince suddenly thrust into power and finding his religious beliefs opposite that of his father's (those damned radicals, always wanting to be 'progressive') and you will get an idea of the bloodshed that comes with it. For all that this is the modern era, President Obama is utilizing a set of ideas for the socialist conception of the international (Communist) and national (Fascist) sort, trending more towards the latter as Nationalism is always easier to sell than internationalism. The impulse to nationalize financial institutions and banks, health care, and enforce public service to the State are all National Socialism, or Fascism. When government controls private financial and social affairs to the benefit of the Nation that is Fascism. Socialism is the liquidation of those artifacts to be controlled by a central controlling authority that presses for some internationalist brotherhood, but always seems quite able to impoverish everyone first to make them all equal and then spend its time killing the dissenters. Communists ruled all the major industrial institutions in the USSR and did a worse job than our Congress is doing with AIG. Hard to imagine, but that is the case.
By championing 'civil rights' for so many years, the expectation of the Left was that it would actually remove the worst artifacts of government, not increase them or add on newer, even worse ones that will bankrupt us all faster. And as the complaints went on for a seeming eternity, when the Left has demonstrated that it not only didn't mean what it said but meant just the opposite, and didn't even bother to figure out what it was they were protesting or wanted, the FFT now makes it seem like they have been in power for the entire time they have been complaining plus two months.
That is almost an experiential lifetime in the modern age.
Yet the prescription by the Left for 19th century idealistic socialism via 20th century conceptual frameworks that are clearly Fascistic and often Communistic, puts them at odds with a world that is changing far faster than Marx had ever imagined possible as HE thought socialism was 'right around the corner'. At least the Right had gotten up to the Dinosaur age, and couldn't figure out that big old rock coming down from the sky. The Left is in the late Permian and absolutely unready for the Permo-Triassic event about to hit them... and yet they had nearly a lifetime, by subjective experience standards, to prepare for this.
A dollar doesn't go as far as it used to and now it will soon go almost nowhere at all.
And then time will really start to compress as those who are capable are put out of work and the FFT starts working for THEM. And as these are the builders and creators, engineers, mid-level managers, project managers, accountants, construction workers, small business owners and their employees, they will not depend on 'being nice' to get things done nor on government to 'take care of them', just seek common ground and cooperation to get the will of society instated in its proper place over government. This storm has taken generations to build.
We can already see it coming, feel how it will devastate us, and the time to do something grows short... weeks and months which will feel like months and years.
I suggest the Left let the 19th century go and adapt to the 21st.
The Left and Right are the late comers to the party, and their garments are moldy and in tatters when they are not gone entirely.
What comes next will be unpleasant for all concerned.
No matter who loses, the FFT wins.
Supporting Friends and Allies
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