#24: Blind Fish and Evolution!

There are a number of species of blind cave-fish, all of which have non-functioning eyes. I find these of particular interest for evolutionary theory. How can the traditional evolutionary doctrine explain these fish?

I see only two possible hypotheses. The first is that eye-like structures can mutate into existence without having any adaptive value at all. This would be an expensive hypothesis for the theory, since it would allow for evolution even in the absence of survival benefit in the competition for continuing existence. In effect, making this hypothesis would be tantamount to giving up the doctrine of natural selection. Yet, in addition, if we accepted the idea that eye-like structures can mutate into existence without having any adaptive value at all, we would faced with the new question as to why that adaptive process did not produce fully seeing eyes. Why, it would have to be explained, did the process that produced the blind eyes stop short of fully seeing eyes?

The second, and more attractive, option is that these were at one time seeing fish who lost their ability to see through lack of use. The notion that leaps to the mind is that of atrophy. We all know the popular wisdom that if you don’t use it, you lose it, right? All that is required of evolutionary theory is that natural selection is taken to work backwards as well as forwards. This would mean that no longer adaptive features gradually cease to appear in the population since their utility is gone. Hmm.

This is promising. Sightedness once gave them an advantage, and thus all of them became sighted, the blind ones disappeared. Once in the caves, the sightedness lost its utility and … it disappeared? While the eye structure stayed? Why did it disappear? Were there still blind fish around? Let’s assume there were, why would their blindness be a sufficient advantage to make blindness the norm? And further, why is the eye structure still there? If the sightedness disappeared simply because it was no longer useful to survival, why wouldn’t the same be true of the eye structure? Why, for that matter, do we still have the appendix?

And if there were no blind fish around to compete in the dark, would sightedness still have disappeared (leaving the eye structure)? Why? How does natural selection explain this? But even if we use the atrophy argument instead of natural selection, there is still a problem. If you don’t exercise, yes, you will become increasingly weak and pudgy, but it does not follow that you will have weak and pudgy children as a result of your own weakness and pudginess. Yet, the fish who didn’t use their eyes not only lost their sight, but they bred children who were also blind! Jean-Baptiste Lamarck, these fish rehabilitate your theory! Acquired characteristics can be heritable!

#23: A Frivolous Contribution: Requiescat en Pace

Without being a Social Scientist, I feel reasonably sure that there are far more Dead people than living ones. Again, not being a Social Scientist, I can’t argue statistically that all Dead people are Democrats, but if the many who voted in the last election are a representative sample, then, yes, the Dead are Democrats. Which makes it all the more surprising that the Dead were neither promised benefits by the Obama campaign nor were billions of stimulus dollars aimed in their direction. And who needs stimulus more than the Dead, eh? And just imagine the power of the man who awakens this group to its political potential. AARP, the political arm of the Almost Dead, is nothing in comparison! We’re talking about the AADP! What is it? Read on.

We know that unions, whose members are known to work like the Dead, have already received huge disbursements, not to mention ownership of GM and Chrysler; we know that ACORN received and was promised a further fortune, and that part of what ACORN does is register Dead people to vote for Democrats; and we know that various other parties friendly to Obama have done very well. Why have the Dead failed to get any gravy for themselves? Have they been too inert, too passive? That has always tended to be their problem. Has Obama taken them for granted? Does he assume that they’re like blacks and Jews, that they’ll vote for him not matter what he does? I suppose he’d have some justification for such confidence.

Well, it’s always difficult to get into someone else’s mind, especially when it’s the mind of a genius and so different from our own. Whatever the answer, it has to be one that includes the premise that Obama would never fail to reward a loyal constituency. And that may be the clue to our conundrum.

Perhaps Obama simply hasn’t noticed the Dead. The Dead are a very discreet bunch and, in addition, Obama is used to getting his support from the Living Dead. Given how closely the Living Dead resemble the Defunct Dead (except for their odd way of walking and their hunger for living flesh and other people’s money), it would come as no surprise if even Obama failed to notice them.

The reason, I suggest, that Obama hasn’t rewarded the Dead is that he didn’t notice them as a distinct identity population! Now that we’ve told him, expect immediate public recognition of the contributions the Dead have made to the United States, acknowledgment of how much they have suffered at the hands of Living White Males (who buried them!), and large new initiatives on the cemetery front to address the many problems they have integrating into a Living White World.

Expect a Czar to be appointed to represent the Dead. It could even be the last one, Czar Nicholas, who would easily qualify since he is, in fact, dead. When all this happens, and it will, the country will finally, after millions of years, repair its terrible oversight through a formal recognition of the AADP: the American Association of Departed People.

Requiescat en pace.

#22: Know Thine Enemy -- The Methods of the Left

While Leftists always claim the moral high ground as theirs by right, arguing that what they do is for the betterment of the “ordinary working people,” they are actually what I call “trans-moral.” By this I mean that there is no means too low for them to use. The True Believers among them are happy to use any means, no matter how dishonest or vicious, because they see themselves as doing holy work. The populist opportunists among them don’t care what they do or say simply because they have no moral constraints at all. So we are left dealing with fools, on the one hand, who believe themselves licensed by their high calling to lie and cheat, and criminals, on the other, who really don’t feel the need to justify their lying and cheating at all (it is simply what they do).

Our only defense against the fools and the criminals is to learn to detect their activities, to become sensitized to the methods of the Left.

Here is a partial list of those methods:

1) Denying the obvious and claiming only stupid, stupid people believe the obvious: Muslims do NOT hate all Christians and Jews (it just seems that way); the whole thing is MUCH more complicated than you think, and much too complicated for YOU to understand (you uneducated, poor, simple boob!).

2) Distraction, e.g. but look what X, Y, or Z did, and HE’S a CONSERVATIVE!

3) Character assassination by teams of surrogates, attacking the person, not what they say. The ad hominem argument on an organized, huge mechanized scale.

4) Playing the victim: oooh, oooh, he called me a bad name, he said I LIED (Well, did you? Doesn’t matter, he made me feel bad!). RA-A-A-A-CISM!

5) Selective Moral Perception: Oh, oh, oh Guantanamo! The horror, oh, the horror! But why do we hear so little about Russian, Chinese, Sudanese, and Arab violations of human rights?

6) Cultural Relativity, a version of the double standard. When WE defend ourselves, we are horrible, horrible war-mongers. When others attack US, they are merely expressing the values of their own unique (and even quite beautiful) cultures.

7) Moral equivalence: Yeah, but the Israelis once attacked the Lebanese.

8) Ignoring relevant differences: So what if they were defending themselves?

9) Denying the differences even exist: Yeah, well, what IS “defending” any way, if not just an excuse for attacking, eh?

10) Faking scenes of victimization on film, a favorite of the Arabs and their European enablers.

11) Brainwashing the young, e.g. Palestinian children’s books and University Social Science courses, and primary and secondary school textbooks.

12) Political “theory”: It is ALWAYS immoral and counter-productive to retaliate against aggression. There are ALWAYS non-violent conflict resolution possibilities available. War is NEVER justified, no matter what the other side does.

13) Blame the victim: it’s all our own fault, if we hadn’t done X, Y, or Z, they wouldn’t have attacked us. THEY are just acting reasonably, but WE were EVIL. We just have to stop our wicked, wicked ways and everything will be OK.

14) Outright lying: e.g. there were twenty people at the rally (when there were 20,000), they were violent and crazy (when they were middle aged cheerful people expressing themselves); illegal immigrant will NOT be covered by the government healthcare plan (when there is nothing in it to prevent it); there will be no new taxes (when there will).

15) Charging Critics with Using the Left's Own Tactics. The "right" is "mean-spirited" (was there ever a more infantile charge?); the "right" is "partisan"; the "right" is "divisive"; the "right" attacks individuals, rather than "ideas" (Clinton's phrase, the "politics of personal destruction", a technique he developed into an art form). For the Left, any statement of an inconvenient truth is an "attack".

16) Taking over the mass media, e.g. the Times, CNN, MSNBC, etc. and marketing a totally one-sided value laden vision of events.

#21: Who are ya gonna believe? Me, or yer lyin' eyes?

In the recent movie Chicago, a woman finds her husband at home in bed with two other women. Just prior to being shot dead by his wife, the husband asks her, ungrammatically and perhaps imprudently,

“Who are you going to believe, me or your lying eyes?”

This is the question that has been asked of the common man in recent years by the intellectuals of the Left, and fortunately the common man has been more tolerant than the fictional wife. It is the same as the question first raised by Hume with respect to Pyrrhonian skepticism. His answer was that it cannot be defeated by reason, but, have no fear, no one will believe it. Perhaps this was true of skepticism, but neither of these claims is true of current Leftist counter-intuitive “theory.” I think the Left can be defeated by reason and, as is all too sadly plain, it can all too often be believed.

Since the time that Eddington illustrated the counter-intuitive side of modern physics with his discussion of his “two tables,” one solid and one not, the model of science’s superiority over the ordinary view has been increasingly used by the social sciences. But, truth be told, the “social sciences” are, at best, only wannabe sciences, using the authority and cache of the physical sciences to push their various progressive agendas. Does anyone not ideologically brain-damaged really believe that “Political Science” is in any sense at all a “science”? Social “Science” tells us that big government leads to a better life for everyone. Apparently, life in the USSR, in the rice paddies of Viet Nam and China, in North Korea, and in Cuba is really better than it is in the U.S.. I guess that’s why so many Americans are trying desperately to be smuggled into those countries. Social “Science” tells us that there is no measurable difference in behavior or performance between racial groups? Hmmm. Apparently it only seems that way. Social “Science” tells us that Arab terrorists are really “freedom fighters.” Hmmm. You could have fooled me. Social “Science” tells us over and over again that “the vast majority” of Muslims “only want to live in peace.” Gee, that’s odd. How come we don’t hear from them? Social "science" tells us that torture "doesn't work." They should have told Khalid Sheik Mohammed. I bet it would make your average Social Scientist confess his sins pronto. And on and on and on.

Here is an example of the counter-intuitive been sold in a more subtle way to the unsuspecting masses.

For quite long time now, the Left has been able to set the terms of the social debate, not only by deciding what should be discussed (or what is discussable, e.g. biological racial differences were NOT discussable in the works of Jensen, Herrnstein, Rushton and others), but also in terms of the very words in which these debates were to be couched.

One such example is that of the word "phobic," which has been combined with other words or parts of words in various ways. A very recent example is "commitment-phobic," while an older one is "homophobic," and still another is “xenophobic.” What is interesting is that these coinages make an assumption not everyone so labeled might be willing to accept, but it is a socio-politically interesting assumption. These are what used to be called “loaded” words, meaning that they carried emotional or political baggage that wise people would eschew. Nowadays, they don’t eschew them, they invent them precisely for their baggage.

The baggage in these words is that there is no such thing as an authentic aversion that is not reducible to a fear. Closely tied to this tacit doctrine is the even more buried assumption that the fear itself is irrational, indefensible, and unjustifiable. This means that the very use of the new technical word dismisses the seriousness of the person's expressed preference. This is an instance of a general argument form in which it is not the argument that is addressed, but rather the attributed state of mind of the person making the argument. Perhaps, Argumentum ad neuroticum (AaN) should be added to the list of fallacies.

The choice “phobia,” the word for fear, is not coincidental, it is intended to be an attack within a word, an attack designed to place the other on the defensive, it is intended as a pre-emptive strike that leaves the opponent vulnerable.

A similar story lies behind the word "commitment-phobic"; that is, it prejudges the person who opts to avoid commitments, and assigns his decision to fear, not personal preference. The implication is that there simply could not exist a simple preference against gays or against marital commitment or, for that matter, foreigners.

The case of "phobic" is more subtle than that of an explicit case of AaN because it is concealed within the choice of a word particle. When I call someone a "homophobe," I am not saying that he dislikes homosexuals, I am saying that he fears homosexuals (and, perhaps, dislikes them only because he fears them). The choice of this word arbitrarily excludes the possibility that anyone should simply dislike homosexuals. For these people, disliking any group whatsoever simply for the group’s characteristics is considered logically impossible (thus, their apparent dislike must actually be something quite different of which they’re unaware). The implication is that the dislike of a group is an illness, not a preference. But that’s a political/psychological biographical fact about progressives, not the actual possibility of such dislike. Wishing it were so doesn’t mechanically make it so.

It is worthwhile noting that words coined before our psychologically enlightened times did allow for group dislike or hatred. In those benighted days, it was possible, for example, to dislike women; the word for that was "misogyny." We now also have the word “gynophobia.” At least we have a choice. It was also possible to dislike or hate man in general; a person with this attitude was called a "misanthrope."

It remains to be proven, I think, that non-fear group preferences are simply impossible. I think the intuitive and common-sense view of these things is that groups are really capable of being likable or dislikable. I, for example, do not like paedophiles. I don't detect any particular fear of them within myself. I also think I probably would not like either a necrophile (who likes getting it on with dead bodies, presumably human ones) or a coprophile (whose sexual enjoying is associated with human waste). I would be uncomfortable if one moved in next to us or if a club-house for them were introduced to our neighborhood. That one cannot like or dislike a group for reasons other than fear is the counter-intuitive thesis of a psychological theory produced and promoted by academics with a political/moral agenda.

I don’t argue that the “Social Sciences” are worth nothing, just much less than advertised. If Sociology stuck to doing statistical demographics, it might be reasonably defensibly. If Political “Science” stuck to describing political structures, it might also be ok. If Geography stuck to cartography, that would be nice. Academic departments suffer from exactly the same defects as governmental institutions: they create fictional work for themselves in order to justify their own growth.

I end by mentioning that this societal disease, namely this cancerous growth of institutions beyond their actual utility, has already spread beyond the Social “Sciences.” What used to be departments producing weather girls have now become departments of Meteorology, often subsumed under faculties of “Earth Science.” We can thank these entities for the catastrophic ponzi scheme of “Global Warming” invented by Algor (right after he invented the internet). Please notice the defining characteristic of a Lefty Scam: ordinary people just don’t seem to see it, only the High Priests of the Arcane New Science have the superior intelligence and training to do so.

We are sooooo fortunate to have them looking out for us.

#20: Commies, Nazis, Right, Left -- What's It All About?

A few years ago, I took to reminding some of my best students that the Nazis were, in fact, Socialists. This came as a bit of a surprise to them, since they had been taught that Socialists are “good” and Nazis are bad. They were even more surprised when I pointed out to them that “Nazi” was an acronym for “National Socialist” and that a “National” Socialist couldn’t help but still be a Socialist. More recently, Jonah Goldberg published a book making much the same point, namely that if one looks at the Nazi governance of Germany, it was through and through socialist. Any familiarity with early 20^th century history will confirm this, since Nazism was a heavily derivative doctrine in its essentials. Nazism was learned, not surprisingly, from those intrepid pioneers of totalitarianism, Lenin, Trotsky, and Stalin. Mussolini also learned from those forbearers, and Hitler learned from Mussolini. I need hardly point out that all of Hitler’s “role-models” were socialists of one kind or another. Oddly, the only contemprary of Hitler's who didn’t follow those role-models out of respect and admiration was Francisco Franco, who thought he would be able to stay out of the mess they were all causing.

At the end of WW II, the scribbling classes were all made up of sincere and well-intentioned progressives (read “socialists” or “fellow travelers”) and so the history of the preceding half century was given a distinct pink tinge. In particular, the scribblers managed to assign the term “right” to the Nazis, making it appear that whatever challenged Soviet style socialism was “the opposite” of socialism. My good friend Jim Ryan has just instructively discussed the uses of “right” and “left” on his blog (http://philosoblog.blogspot.com/), and I am in substantial agreement with what he says. I would only add to his discussion that there is one way in which talking about these things is still useful.

While Hitler was a socialist, and while both Hitler and Stalin were totalitarians, in Hitler’s mind, it was still communist Russia that was the ultimate enemy. His early aggressions, such as the Sudetenland in Czechoslovakia, were done for their wealth, so that the German armed forces could be rebuilt. He really did not seem keen on a conflict with Britain, and he hoped that his easy conquest of France would persuade the Brits to stay out of the fray. His one strategic assault was on Poland, and that was because it was through Poland that he would attack the Soviet Union. Unfortunately for the Russian people, it took Stalin a bit too long to realize that Hitler was not his friend. When his own spies reported Hitler’s build up of forces on the USSR border, he had the spies killed as lying agents of the West trying to drive a wedge between him and his good friend Adolf. Huge Panzer divisions were massed on his border before Stalin got the point. But given all that they had in common, we should ask precisely what it was that differentiated Hitler’s socialism from Stalin’s. The answer is not hard to find at all.

Hitler’s was a “National” socialism, which we should read as a “nationalist” socialism. Yes, of course, you say, Hitler was a German Nationalist – the Versailles Treaty humiliation, the stab-in-the-back narrative that the Germans believed, etc.. It was a natural strategic move on Hitler’s part to play on these feelings in his population. But the evidence, I think, shows this to be too facile. Hitler didn’t just use nationalism to unify the Volk, he was himself a passionate nationalist. It is this that differentiates him from the socialist/communists then and now, and it tells us something extremely important, not about Nazism, but about socialism, even the socialism that threatens us today, internally as well as externally.

Socialism is international in its very essence. It is no accident that it’s anthem is the Internationale. The best known slogan of communism, Workers of the world, unite, you have nothing to lose but your chains, comes from Marx and Engels’ Communist Manifesto. It is not, workers of Minsk or Workers of Russia or even Workers of the Soviet Union; it is workers of the … World!

The communists took this very seriously, and today’s variants still do. At the heart of the theory lies the belief that all cultural differences are instruments of worker domination. At the heart of the theory lies the belief that culture and national identification are distractions, capitalist tools for blocking the evolution of the classless society. The only truly free man is the man who is nothing beyond a worker in the classless society.

Of course, a culture is also always a potential rival to the power of the state. It is a convenient doctrine that meets two needs simultaneously.

Let me now drop the other penny.

It is this theory that underlies a number of political and cultural conflicts in the current United States and, to a degree, the European Union.

From the scribbling class we see:

A sudden attack on Christian religion.

A push towards using “international law.”

A hostility towards American nationalism.

A denial of American Exceptionalism.

A constant preference for all things European.

A consistent resistance to reinforcing and maintaining national boundaries.

Of course, one might argue that the sympathy and latitude that the scribblers give to Muslims counts against my point, but I think not. It is the United States that is the sole remaining powerful capitalist entity in the world. For the socialists, the United States must be brought down, if there is to be socialist progress in the world. If the radical Muslims can help in that cause, then they are friends. The communists from Lenin on have been nothing if not pragmatic in their choice of allegiances, just as both Hitler and Stalin were. Should the communists manage to bring the U.S.A. down, the Muslims would eventually find that it was their turn. Ultimately, the goal is to cleanse the world of cultures in the plural, to homogenize the world, to rend all men uniform.

It’s an attractive picture, isn’t it?

And so, I recommend that when we think of what was happening in Europe in the 1930s, we cease accepting the narrative that this was a conflict between socialism and a totalitarian “opposite”; that we think of it instead as a conflict between two species of socialism, the nationalist and the internationalist, both of which either are or incline towards dictatorships. The one form of government that was only minimally present in Europe at this time was free enterprise democracy, and it was also the earliest casualty.

#19: Qui Bono And Two Other Money Questions

When political questions came up in Rome, shrewd Cicero asked Qui Bono, which translates as “who benefits?” Even today, anyone familiar with movies and Tv realizes that the first thing a prosecutor or detective will ask is: Who profits from the crime? We can easily see that when we are trying to unravel mysterious events, an excellent starting point is the identification of motive: look for the person with something to gain.

If we are cynical (which may be nothing more than realistic), we can even apply the question usefully when we are asked to commit ourselves to high ideals and to sacrifice our interests to greater goods. “Pay more taxes to help the poor”: Who profits? “Stop using gasoline to save the planet”: Who profits? “Absorb the illegal immigrants”: Who profits? "Submit to government run health care": Who profits? The road of good intentions is lined on either side with profiteering parasites. One excellent example of this is Michael Moore, who is just capitalizing on bashing capitalizing in his latest movie.

While “who stands to benefit?” is an excellent analytical aid, there are at least two other important and related questions.

“Who is paying the freight?” makes all the difference, but we frequently don’t know and even don’t remember to ask.

We do ask who is paying when we think of Hezbollah and the costs of its armament. But we almost missed the question entirely with respect to Bill Clinton’s campaign and Chinese contributions. And who is now seriously asking where the money for Acorn comes from? Sure, we all suspect there are fellows like the affable and charming George Soros making their contributions, but there are very likely charitable foundations as well, not to mention the federal government itself. Is this something we would want? The federal government using our money to fund the activities of professional social agitators dedicated to the overthrow of the nation as it presently exists? Who is paying? Who is paying? Who? Could some of the money be coming from outside? From Saudi Arabia? From Iran? From Venezuela? It would be helpful to know.

Who is paying? Who is paying for Greenpeace and its fancy speedboats? Who is paying for the anti-globalization protestors wherever the IMF or the World Bank meet? Who pays for their travel, for their food, for their lodging?

It would be good to know who is paying.

It would be disturbing if hostile forces were paying the bills, but maybe even more if it turned out to be you and me.

But a third question should be asked by any large officially sanctioned welfare group such as the population that has invented itself as “The Palestinians.” If there were any intelligence to be found there, a number of related questions would also surface. Given annual international welfare to the tune of millions and millions of dollars, a large pot coming from the EU, another from the US, and a third (we are told) from the wealthy Arab states: Where are the roads? Where are the hospitals? Where are the Universities? Where are the businesses? Where is the money?

For a while it seemed that some people at least were looking for it in Arafat’s Swiss accounts, but that investigation petered out, and not even the starving “Palestinians” are asking this penetrating question: What happened to the money?

Why is it that they never seem to ask: Given all that money, why are we living like this? Asking this question might be the beginning of a new roadmap towards peace.

But even if the Arabs don't want to ask, Where is the money? Shouldn't we be asking that question of what our government doles out in the form of international aid? Where is the money going that we give in the billions whenever there is a disaster? Where is the money going that we give to that joke we house and clothe in Manhattan, the UN? Where is the money we send and have been sending to "developing nations"? And what is it that developing nations "develop"? We know, don't we? They develop their anonymous accounts in Switzerland and the Cayman Islands, and it is with our money that they develop them.

So, in modern terms, the questions are these:

1) Who stands to profit?

2) Who is paying for what is happening? And

3) What happened to the money?

#18: Dostoevsky's The Possessed and Our Times

The novel The Possessed (sometimes The Devils) was written by Fyodor Dostoevsky between 1870 and 1872. It is not much read these days, being considered one of his lesser works, but perhaps more because of its politically unpopular inclination. Briefly put, Dostoevsky is hostile to the revolutionaries of his time, the socialists, the communists, and the anarchists. And, yes, these terms were already in circulation at that time. After all, Marx’s Communist Manifesto came out in 1848 and the revolutionary intellectuals of Russia thought of themselves as Socialist-Anarchists. Fourier style Socialism had been germinating all over Western Europe for most of the century.

Twentieth century literary critics found themselves in a terrible bind over a book like The Possessed, since they were duty bound to acknowledge Dostoevsky’s greatness as a novelist, but they were so terribly disturbed by his political “blindness.” How could a novelist of such extraordinary power, they asked themselves, not be a Socialist? The standard way of negotiating this impasse was for them to blame his outré politics on the trauma of his exile to Siberia and the stresses under which he was writing during the opening years of the 1870s. That was certainly the take of Avraham Yarmolinsky, who revised Constance Garnett’s translation and wrote the introduction to my edition. Since we now know that Russia had become hell on earth in the early 1930s, the time in which Yarmolinsky penned the introduction (1935) (Stalin’s 1920s having been devoted to successive purges and deportations, his 1930s economy sinking, the people starving, and the Soviet concentration camps filling at a horrifying rate) one would like to ask Yarmolinsky in retrospect the rueful question: Who was the deluded one? Was it Dostoevsky or was it yourself?

Dostoevsky’s evil protagonist was Pyotr Stepanovitch Verhovensky, whom he made to be the social agitator (“community organizer”?) son of the political idealist and self-styled intellectual, Stepan Trofimovitch Verhovensky. Trofimovitch, who loves everything European, particularly if it is French, thinks of himself as a true and daring “progressive,” but is at the same time a pathetically dependent buffoon and parasite, living off his patroness, Varvara Petrovna Stavrogin. One cannot help but feel that making Pyotr Stepanovitch the product of this foolish and useless man was no accident, and that the message is clear: fatuous idealism is the father of revolution and social chaos. Stepanovitch despises him, it is clear, as he weaves his schemes and plots throughout the novel.

But, for us, what is of special interest is Dostoevsky’s representation of the revolutionaries’ methods. Stepanovitch addresses his revolutionary minions as follows:

“The highest responsibility is laid upon each of you. You are called upon to bring new life into the party which has grown decrepit and stinking with stagnation. Keep that always before your eyes to give you strength. All that you have to do meanwhile is to bring about the downfall of everything—both the government and its moral standards.

None will be left but us, who have prepared ourselves beforehand to take over the government. The intelligent we shall bring over to our side, and as for the fools, we shall mount upon their shoulders. You must not be shy of that. We've got to re‑educate a generation to make them worthy of freedom. … We shall organise to control public opinion; it's shameful not to snatch at anything that lies idle and gaping at us.”

The conspirator Shigalov asks Stepanovitch:

“So far as I understand—and it's impossible not to understand it—you yourself at first and a second time later, drew with great eloquence, but too theoretically, a picture of Russia covered with an endless network of knots. Each of these centres of activity, proselytising and ramifying endlessly, aims by systematic denunciation to injure the prestige of local authority, to reduce the villages to confusion, to spread cynicism and scandals, together with complete disbelief in everything and an eagerness for something better, and finally, by means of fires, as a pre-eminently national method, to reduce the country at a given moment, if need be, to desperation. Are those your words which I tried to remember accurately? Is that the programme you gave us as the authorised representative of the central committee, which is to this day utterly unknown to us and almost like a myth?”

Hence Rahm Emmanuel's famous words: This is too good a crisis to waste!

And later in the book, after the plot has unravelled, another one of the conspirators, Lyamshin, confesses everything to the police, and describes a very familiar agenda:

“When asked what was the object of so many murders and scandals and dastardly outrages, he answered with feverish haste that ‘it was with the idea of systematically undermining the foundations, systematically destroying society and all principles; with the idea of nonplussing every one and making hay of everything, and then, when society was tottering, sick and out of joint, cynical and sceptical though filled with an intense eagerness for self-preservation and for some guiding idea, suddenly to seize it in their hands, raising the standard of revolt and relying on a complete network of quintets, which were actively, meanwhile, gathering recruits and seeking out the weak spots which could be attacked.’ In conclusion, he said that here in our town Pyotr Stepanovitch had organised only the first experiment in such systematic disorder, so to speak as a programme for further activity, and for all the quintets … (680)

But arguably even more prescient is Stepanovitch’s conversation with, as it were, the “romantic” lead of the novel, the proud and darkly tormented aristocrat, Nicolay Vsyevolodovitch Stavrogin. Stavrogin’s motives are unclear as the novel progresses, he is mysterious in his intentions, his allegiances, and his affiliations. Yet, it becomes increasingly manifest, that he is indeed somehow involved with the conspirator group. It is also becomes clear finally what role Stepanovitch has in mind for Stavrogin. This is how the revealing conversation between the two unfolds:

“Listen. First of all we'll make an upheaval,”

[Pyotr Stepanovitch] Verhovensky went on in desperate haste, continually clutching at Stavrogin's left sleeve. “I've already told you. We shall penetrate to the peasantry. Do you know that we are tremendously powerful already? Our party does not consist only of those who commit murder and arson, fire off pistols in the traditional fashion, or bite colonels. They are only a hindrance. I don't accept anything without discipline. I am a scoundrel, of course, and not a socialist. Ha ha! Listen. I've reckoned them all up: a teacher who laughs with children at their God and at their cradle; is on our side. The lawyer who defends an educated murderer because he is more cultured than his victims and could not , help murdering them to get money is one of us. The schoolboys who murder a peasant for the sake of sensation are ours. The juries who acquit every criminal are ours. The prosecutor who trembles at a trial for fear he should not seem advanced enough is ours, ours. Among officials and literary men we have lots, lots, and they don't know it themselves. On the other hand, the docility of schoolboys and fools has reached an extreme pitch; the schoolmasters are bitter and bilious. On all sides we see vanity puffed up out of all proportion; brutal, monstrous appetites. . . . Do you know how many we shall catch by little, ready-made ideas? When I left Russia, Littre's dictum that crime is insanity was all the rage; I come back and I find that crime is no longer insanity, but simply common sense, almost a duty; anyway, a gallant protest. 'How can we expect a cultured man not to commit a murder, if he is in need of money.' But these are only the first fruits. The Russian God has already been vanquished by cheap vodka. The peasants are drunk, the mothers are drunk, the children are drunk, the churches are empty, and in the peasant courts one hears, 'Two hundred lashes or stand us a bucket of vodka.' Oh, this generation has only to grow up. It's only a pity we can't afford to wait, or we might have let them get a .bit more tipsy! Ah, what a pity there's no proletariat! But there will be, there will be; we are going that way. . .

…

“Well, Verhovensky, this is the first time I've heard you talk, and I listen with amazement,” observed Stavrogin. “So you are really not a socialist, then, but some sort of ... ambitious politician?”

“A scoundrel, a scoundrel! You are wondering what I am. I'll tell you what I am directly, that's what I am leading up to. It was not for nothing that I kissed your hand. But the people-must believe that we know what we are after, while the other side do nothing but 'brandish their cudgels and beat their own followers.' Ah, if we only had more time! That's the only trouble, we have no time. We will proclaim destruction. . . .. Why is it, why is it that idea has such a fascination. But we must have a little exercise; we must. We'll set fires going. . . . We'll set legends going. Every scurvy 'group' will be of use. Out of those very groups I'll pick you out fellows so keen they'll not shrink from shooting, and be grateful for the honour of a job, too. Well, and there will be an upheaval! There's going to be such an upset as the world has never seen before. . . . Russia will be overwhelmed with darkness, the earth will weep for its old gods.. . . . Well, then we shall bring forward . . .

whom?”

“Whom.”

“Ivan the Tsarevitch.”

“Who-m?”

“Ivan the Tsarevitch. You! You!” (427-429)

I said earlier that Pyotr Stepanovitch's agenda had a familiar ring to it, and now I give the reason why. In today’s world, Ivan the Tsarevitch is Barack Obama, the marketable front end of a totally cynical putsch. Who is the current Stepanovitch, who is the scoundrel conducting the Obama opera from the orchestra pit? We only know that he is here, as in the novel, a shadowy figure, perhaps one among several, and most likely the orchestra pit is Chicago, home to the Democrat political machine, arguably the most corrupt in the history of the United States.

Conservative writers have recently made much of Saul Alinsky’s Rules for Radicals (1971), hoping to show that moves being made currently are not innocent of revolutionary intent. They are not wrong in this, but their case is actually stronger than they seem to realize. Alinsky’s tactics were not original, they had actually been developed over the past hundred and fifty years. His tactics had already been applied by Hitler in the 1930s, before him by Mussolini, and before him by Lenin and Trotsky. But that they were already clearly understood a good fifty years earlier is evidenced by these speeches and others like them in The Possessed.