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Individual Blog Post From Stephen McDonald
Stephen McDonald is a writer whose work blends genres that have no business being together. In doing this, his goal is to always push to give the reader something they haven't seen before.
Sunday, June 15th 2014
... or at least see the potential upside.
Posted Sun Jun 15 2014 07:41
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PJ Media's David Solway has a column up arguing Obama's presidency only makes sense when viewed through the lens of Cloward-Piven.
The Cloward-Piven Strategy:
In other words, politics as a continuation of war by other means."seeks to hasten the fall of capitalism by overloading the government bureaucracy with a flood of impossible demands, thus pushing society into crisis and economic collapse." Choking the welfare rolls would serve to generate a political and financial meltdown, "break the budget, jam the bureaucratic gears into gridlock, and bring the system crashing down." The fear, turmoil and violence accompanying such a debacle would provide the 'perfect conditions for fostering radical change.
Solway's insight isn't particularly new--I've seen columns arguing that Obama was a horseman of the Cloward-Piven apocalypse since at least the 2009 (non-) Stimulus bill. But it's well worth the read since, six years in, he has more data against which to measure Obama. One is hard-pressed to think of a single Obama initiative that hasn't harmed the economy or diminished American standing in the world. What emerges is a portrait not of a good-hearted but ultimately naive dolt (even an idiot would realize what he's doing isn't working and correct course) but of someone at war with the nation that made the mistake of putting him into office.
We should hope for the best, of course, but one wonders if even a President Cruz/Perry/Walker/Paul/Jindal and a Republican party that discovered some modicum of courage could reverse our present drain-circling. Even if in the unlikely event you had both these, there would still be an army of leftoids infesting government agencies, courts and the press, each doing their small part to ensure that the march towards Cloward-Piven singularity is never stopped. Against such a backdrop, the smart bet is on some kind of Cloward-Piven collapse sooner or later. We have to continually check their efforts to hold onto some semblance of the old United States yet they, like terrorists, only have to complete their suicide mission once to "win".
Yet increasingly, I have to wonder how much of a win Cloward-Piven would be for them. As things stand, those that have helped guide the decline such as Obama, Eric Holder, Harry Reid, and their accomplices such as the disgusting Lois Lerner, will never see the inside of a courtroom. Once a true collapse hits, the color of legal legitimacy that both gives them authority and makes them for the moment untouchable is washed away. With the old order's restraints gone, whose to say those that midwifed the collapse shouldn't swing listlessly against the backdrop of a pewter sky?
To be sure, those who fought against collapse are the more likely ones to receive the worst of an America gone red in tooth and claw. Property confiscation at a minimum, reeducation camps a probability. If that wasn't the probable outcome, leftoids wouldn't be pushing for a Cloward-Piven result in the first place. For that reason alone, the sane among us hope the Cloward-Piven apocalypse is somehow avoided.
Yet at this point we have little say in whether or not it happens. We may only get to choose our response when it does. If the wheels truly come off the American experiment, then, why not make the most of it? To borrow from Rahm Emanuel:
You never let a serious crisis go to waste. And what I mean by that it's an opportunity to do things you think you could not do before.
The country in ruins, the old establishment--which anymore is leftoid at its core--having failed, why shouldn't everything it held dear be swept away? Why let the opportunity for real, structural change go to waste? Why not correct what they broke so spectacularly?
The sky is the limit. The welfare state, Section 8 housing, SNAP, etc.? Sorry, but using the State to enable theft from your fellow citizens was part of the old, illegitimate system. Gay marriage? Old order--no longer valid. Lo siento, my illegal immigrant friends--back home you will go, and take with you those that wanted to replace our votes with yours.
Mindset means more than any tips one will find on a survivalist board. The most powerful thing in the world is belief, father as it is to action. And since you can bet that the other side will be following their beliefs to their natural conclusions (see Khmer Rouge; USSR; etc., histories thereof), you should similarly weaponize your beliefs. Understand that in a crisis things can be changed. That you can change them. That nothing of the old leftoid order was legitimate. That those that have made this all necessary deserve to be punished. That a rebuilt nation would be a better one, and that this is worth fighting for.
I don't expect many on the conservative or libertarian side to like this suggestion. But, paraphrasing Trotsky, while you may not be interested in Cloward-Piven, it is interested in you (and your families). If it's going to happen, one should do more than prepare against it. With the rule of law suspended anyway, weshould be prepared to make the most of it.The goal not mere survival or escape, but a society remade in our image, not theirs.
And who knows? I doubt it, but maybe the possibility of such a non-leftoid outcome will dissuade Cloward-Piven enthusiasts. At any rate, it's chances of avoiding catastrophe have to be at least as good as the play-by-the-rules GOP politics that has been just a speed bump on the road to ruin.