The other heavy-rotation book, nearly finished.

The Cypresses Believe in God by José María Gironella.

The classic novel of the run-up to the Spanish Civil War, it is back in print thanks to the efforts of Cluny Media. CM also just republished the second book in the trilogy, One Million Dead, and presumably Peace After War will follow.

As to the first book, it's...a lot. A meditative, slow-burn elegy which shows how political polarization can make good people bay for blood and turn neighbors into enemies. 

Yes, Gironella was a Nationalist soldier. But while he was a believing Catholic whose sympathies are obvious, he creates no strawmen and deplores the failures of the Church and right wing politicos to address economic and spiritual destitution.

The Gospel verses that leap to mind as one reads it are from the Olivet Discourse:

For as in those days before the flood they were eating and drinking, marrying and giving in marriage, until the day when Noah entered the ark and they did not know until the flood came and swept them all away...

A full review to come.

It'll be fine.

The bloodlust in revolutionary civil wars stems from the apocalyptic nature of such contests, the attempt on each side to create a new society and cultural order, not merely a different political system, totally purged of antagonistic elements.

In these conflicts, the enemy is perceived not as an ordinary political rival, but as a kind of metaphysical incarnation of evil that must be eradicated before it infects, or imposes the same terror on, one's own side. 

A revolutionary civil war is not an ordinary political contest, but a conflict of ultimates about society, religion, and culture, perceived to demand a total and uncompromising solution.

This scenario had also crossed my mind.

In response to soaring crime rates and chaos at the municipal and state levels, the Federal government swoops in with the answer:

National police. 

One does not have to endorse Kirk's wheels-within-wheels theory--in fact, one should not. 

But the reality is that human beings abhor chaos and the fear that comes with it. And history shows us that fearful people will do all sorts of things to make the fear go away.

See, e.g., the Patriot Act, Department of Homeland Security and Transportation Safety Administration.

A national police force would sound comparatively mild to people horrified by soaring homicide rates.

But it would be politicized right out of the gate, with historically-predictable results. By the way, the previous link omits the salient act of the politicized Asaltos: their participation in the assassination of parliamentarian Calvo Sotelo. Which, in the self-reinforcing spiral of Spanish politics, made the officers' coup viable. 

Likewise, the arrival of a national police force, accountable only to the party in power, would invariably aggravate division, with foreseeable results. 

Which, in our times, makes it a virtual cinch to occur. 

In a (Doctor) Strange mood.

 

"I went forward in time, to view alternate futures. 

To see all the possible outcomes of the coming American conflict."

"How many did you see?" 

"14,000,605." 

"How many without blood?" 

"None."

The tinder of our mutual hatred is bone dry.

Our leadership class is incapable of doing anything except stoking the hatred.

Cassandra has decided she's just going to go to the park, watch the birds, smoke some menthols while she can, order carryout from Troy's Panda Kitchen and catch the next Pitch Meeting.

The downward spiral continues.

Apropos of this insightful tweet about conservatism's corporate suicide pact (bad language, but it's grimly on point).

Cigna goes Full Critical Theory Stasi on its employees, demanding information about religious and sexual identity and forcing struggle sessions on their whiteys.

The blowback on this in a decade will be fascinating as Hell. And probably almost as fiery.

I'm not talking about lawsuits, which should also be useful. I'm thinking more broadly.

"Might as well be hanged for a sheep as for a lamb" offers timeless insight into human nature.

In the meantime, yes--raise that corporate rate.

Do eet.

Woke policy, woke taxes. 

Thought of the day.

You can't 'speak truth to power' when you have enlisted with the powers that be.

And someone in Blighty notes Spain-like fissures there, too.

From June 2020, but worth a read. The class and culture fissures in Britain appear to be somewhat analogous to the ones here.

John Jalsevac gazes into the maelstrom.

 And it makes him angry.

Me? Some, but more despair.

Reason no longer reigns anywhere. Overreaction breeds overreaction and so the cycle reinforces itself.

"The avalanche has started. It is too late for the pebbles to vote."

Nevertheless, his thoughts are worth a read. Here's a sample:

Trump repeated his accusations against Pence at the rally on Wed[nesday] morning. “If Mike Pence does the right thing we win the election,” he said. He even dared to suggest that if Pence didn’t do what he said, it was because he lacked “courage”.

Pence responded with a statement explaining why he couldn’t do what Trump was demanding he do. Clearly, he was right. You’d have to be insane or delusional to think the framers of the Constitution or the 12th amendment intended to grant the vice president the authority to do what Trump was demanding Pence do. (“Hey, let’s give unilateral authority to reject legislatively-certified electoral votes to the politician whose continued position and power depend on the outcome of that vote! What a great idea! Because a little tyranny never hurt democracy, amiright?”) Which is why it has never happened in the history of the country.

According to reports, during the ensuing riot some of the rioters rampaged through the Capitol looking for Pence, so they could string him up. Some of them built a gallows in front. A day later, “hang Mike Pence” trended on Twitter.

If you don't need to visit DC or your State capital next Wednesday...don't. I know someone in who works for the State in Lansing, and the word has been passed to stay away from the office that day.

 

Year Zero comes to the Capitol.

I have been trying to collect the welter of thoughts in response to the mob attack on the Capitol yesterday.

The bottom line is that it was another act of iconoclasm, an assault on American history indistinguishable from the ones we saw over the summer and continue to see now.

Only this time, it came from a tribe of the Right.

The reality is there are a large number of people, including prominent ones in elected office, who do not love the Republic. At most, they love a hypothetical state, one which, like "true communism," will never exist no matter how many bodies are added to the foundations.

And yes, there were and are no shortage of cranks on the right--I remember talk radio during the Clinton years, the Michigan Militia and the like, up to the unlamented Steve King, as well as other cringe legislators in safe districts and cynical executives, government and private sector. But at least--or so I used to comfort myself--the average guy on the right was a patriot who loved America's history and respected her symbols. 

I have no love for the corrupt corporatist oligarchy which attempts to dictate what we say or do. I agree that many of them--the information-molding monstrosities of BigTech leap to mind--are corrosive to the institutions of the Republic and the civil society which undergirds it, and deserve to be smashed repeatedly with the anti-trust hammer.

Pour encourager le autres.

And there are additional social, economic and political reforms which need to be made to give the country a chance to survive intact into the second half of this century. 

Simply, the grim reality is this: America no longer generates a sufficient number of the kinds of virtuous citizens she needs to sustain herself. She is spending the capital built up by previous generations, and spending it quickly.

Yesterday demonstrated that with grim clarity: average right-leaning joes stormed the Capitol.

People who heretofore loved the symbols of this nation--and probably still do, not comprehending they are wounding that which they profess to love. Nevertheless, wound it they did. 

Yes, left-wing shit-stirrers were present, contributing to the chaos. Which only reinforces my point about America not generating virtuous citizens to sustain the Republic. But that point is easier to point out to folks in a right-wing tribe. It is, to quote a much-beloved formulation, a truth which is self-evident.

It's harder to accept it when an allied faction does it. Maybe even impossible, as this comment thread at The American Catholic suggests.

More to the point, the leftists were not the majority of the stormers, and the blame cannot be shifted to a convenient them.

Can America regenerate peacefully, reforming herself to endure and more broadly prosper, long-term? Sure--all the tools are there, awaiting the vision and spirit of self-sacrifice and compromise which would enable their use.

Are there massive forces arrayed against it? Absolutely: there are giant piles of money to be made from the current spiral, and cupidity is amply rewarded by selling out the long-term well-being of the citizenry and Republic. All the while spouting pieties about individual rights, justice, global cooperation, privilege and the sacrosanct nature of private enterprise, naturally.

Those are tough odds, but not impossible. It has happened before--survival cancels programming, and crises have a way of focusing the collective mind.

But peaceable regeneration becomes impossible when people sever themselves from their traditions, virtues and reason--and then act accordingly. 

God grants no nation a promise of enduring unity. And we appear to be much nearer the end of that unity than even my pessimistic estimation had feared.