As noted in the Jolt, for everyone who found the first portion too insufferably cheery and optimistic, the case for gloom…

And Now, for the Dark Side…

I’ve been away; I haven’t heard from Ace in a while. I check his Twitter feed and see this:

An anti-collective coalition has disadvantages: 1, the coalition is based on a negative, opposition to collectivism.

1a. which means there is no real positive central politics, just an opposition to collectivism, and we don’t all agree on all oppositions…

Collectivists are always going to be pretty good at collectivizing and collective action. They are, by nature, herders.

Meanwhile, the conservative movement resembles the evil Enterprise in Mirror, Mirror, where advancement is through assassination.

The conservative movement is literally reactionary in the sense that it is a counter-reaction to socialism and cultural Marxism.

It is reactionary in the sense that it is the socialists who have been busy bees since 1932 pushing America towards their model.

We have always reacted to that, saying: Stop it.

But they never stop, ever. And if you beat them at the ballot box, they just infest the judiciary.

Karl Marx on the critique of the state: “Its essential pathos is indignation, its essential work is denunciation.”

“Criticism dealing with this content is criticism in a hand-to-hand fight, and in such a fight the point is… to strike him.” — Marx

He laid it all out, and they followed his game-plan: You simply attack society at every moment, denouncing with indignation, until it falls.

Honestly, I think America is done. I think Obama did it. I hate to give him the credit, but he murdered America. He won.

On the plus side, you can look like a first world country for a while, living off past accumulated capital. Britain managed it for years.

They say socialism works, until you run out of other people’s money. But if you’re ruthless enough, you can extract an awful lot from them.

On the cruise, my colleague Charlie Cooke offered a perfectly clear and depressing summary of the young, low-information, progressive-by-default mindset. (I’m paraphrasing here; refer to his columns for his precise words.)

A significant number of young people now conclude, ‘The government will pay for and take care of all the big things in life – health care, college education, retirement income, day care. This will require higher taxes, but all of those taxes cover all the important things. I’ll get to keep what’s left over. That’s my allowance.’

Does that make you want to punch someone in the face?

First, even if you think that’s a good idea and better than the liberty-minded free market we’ve had for most of our history… what makes you think the federal government is good at taking care of people? The VA scandal? How about the federal government’s program for the disabled?

The nation’s premier federal program that provides work for people who are severely disabled is mired in widespread corruption, financial fraud and violations of the law, numerous sources tell CNN. And instead of helping the severely disabled find work, the taxpayer-funded agency is at times allowing jobs to be taken away from the disabled, the sources say.

The government will legally require you to purchase health insurance, and then send you to a site that doesn’t work to buy it.

More importantly, government is not our father and not our mother. To view the government as the grownups, in charge and handling all of the really important decisions, is to choose to live in a state of perpetual psychological adolescence. (A topic on my mind a lot lately.)