One Step

Special to L. Neil Smith’s The Libertarian Enterprise

It is important not to attribute magical powers to the other side.

Yes, they do have plans, and they post them quite blatantly.

Part of this is to convince themselves and those on their side that everything is going fine. Look, there’s a plan!

The other part is that, as always, they’ve been so profoundly indoctrinated into their one-end-of-history paradise, that they think if you oppose them it’s simply because you have failed to be properly informed. Think about their war cry “Educate yourself.” Because if you only educate yourself, of course you’ll agree with them. (When in fact, to dissent from the “truths” proclaimed by the media-industrial complex requires quite extensive research and self-education, because it’s a hard step to take (agreeing with the mob is always easiest.))

Also think of what happens when they lose? Granted our side tends to go “I guess the people want stupidity now” which is…. stupid, particularly when we know the massive margin of fraud. But their side just goes “We need to explain to them better. The people are so dumb. We must educate them.”

Always with the assumption that if we only knew their full plan we would of course love it. Hence “You’ll own nothing and be happy” because they—rightly in this case—think “you’ll own nothing” and can’t make the leap to “and be happy.” So they have to tell us we’ll be happy. Everything we want or need will be provided by the kindness and care of supreme government. Why don’t we love that. (Mostly because if the government gives you everything it can take everything away, and that we’ve all grown up since kindergarten and want to take care of ourselves, than you so much. But they can’t imagine not trusting government see. Remember the creepy DNC interviewee? “We all have to belong to something, so we belong to the government.”)

Yes, they are quite amazingly good at breaking everything, but that’s not because they have a plan. It’s because we fail to act as they would/as they expect, and so they try to herd us towards it, one step at a time. And they never think further than that one step, because they know they’re smart and we’re dumb, see? If we were smart we’d be on their side, after all. All the smart people are!

And lately it’s all been blowing up in their faces, and they’re trying to figure out why, and of course it can’t be their fault, so they keep getting more and more outrageous.

Take the covidiocy and lockdowns. I’m not sure—precisely—what it was supposed to lead to, precisely. I think they honestly locked us down simply to ruin the economy and mess with the election. Remember that they were “praying” for a recession and trying to figure a way to smash the economy in late 2019. So, the one step thinking (Two, because the middle one is underwear gnomes) was: Release a virus — ????—ruin the economy.

When people started protesting the endless two weeks, they were surprised. SURPRISED! And started cracking down and hitting us with more panic porn, because, d*mn it, if we weren’t going to vote their way, they had to keep us locked down till November, so they could fully establish the…. what was it Zhoe Bai-Den called it? “The most extensive network of fraud”? Something like that.

At the same time, the destruction of our inner cities with the effective removal of all vagrancy—and pooping or doing drugs in public—laws had already started, but at least in Denver they saw a golden opportunity and allowed the homeless to camp on sidewalks, while the tax payers were locked up.

I’m not sure this was even one step thinking so much as a result of two basic assumptions: “The bourgeois must be afflicted. Only that way will they care about the homeless” and “We’re kind.”

It never occurred to them—ever—that the ability to telecommute plus the profoundly unpleasant urban environments would contribute to an exodus from the cities.

Now they are trying—oh, so belatedly—to clean up the cities (Or at least Newsom, but as usual with a creepy overreach that will allow him to use mental hospitals for dissidents, as the USSR did) and begging people to come back.

Mind you the ability to telecommute has been there for 20 years, but management wouldn’t allow it. Now—well, as a friend said “Today was our third “you absolutely must come back and work in the office.” I think one person did.”

Managers and gregarious people absolutely want everyone back, but you can’t put the toothpaste back in the tube. A lot of people like myself—and at this point most of my friends—have taken themselves off to more rural and congenial pastures. (I’ll confess it’s also because we see what is coming, so we want to be near where the food grows.)

Which brings us to the next instance of one step thinking.

This is even more underwear gnomish. Gas prices. First of all they’re sure that we can stand much higher gas prices, because Europe has had them for years. Because, you know, we’re exactly the same as a scrap quilt of countries where to swing a cat you have to get it a passport. Second, they think it will curb pleasure travel. Since apparently making air travel even more unpleasant only caused the deplorable masses to drive everywhere. It never occurs to them the most important use of gas in the US is not even close to being people driving around in their cars. Just like it doesn’t occur to them that most people can’t afford and wouldn’t want electric or hybrid cars. But the most important use of gas is to transport goods, many of them essential, across our continent-sized nation. Well, that and to power our mechanized agriculture, so there’s food to transport.

You see, they only use power to drive around, so it must be what everyone uses it for. So, get an electric car, peasant. Or walk, fat. (Oh, yeah, they also almost all live in urban environments, where walking or biking, or renting one of those insufferable by-the-hour toy cars is an option.)

But now I’ve already heard the gloating, even while they’re begging people to come back to semi-abandoned, lawless cities. “With gas being so expensive, living in the city will be popular again.”

Care to lay a small bet, lefty one-step thinkers? I bet it won’t. You can’t squeeze that paste back into the tube. It’s going to go all over you.

You’re just going to encourage more remote work, and further fleeing to places where food and essential goods still reach. You’re also going to achieve making everyone—everyone—aware of your failures and stupidity.

And that’s how things blow up in your face.

So, guys, as I said before, if one of their five year plans ever works, it will be the first since…. ever.

When they had control of all the means of communication, they could erase their failures, rewrite them as “we meant to do that” and stigmatize anyone who pointed to the true as a crackpot.

That toothpaste is out of the tube, too.

Now all they have is panicked toddlers in charge of a complex mechanism, madly pushing buttons trying to get the desired solution.

And it’s not working—of course.

Yes, it’s destroying everything. It’s going to suck like heck. But on the other hand, we’ll manage somehow. And it’s making clear once and for all for those on the margins that this crazy stuff just doesn’t work.

There are no magic unicorn farts. Once people see that, plainly displayed, they’re not going to believe in the unicorn farts and magical government again.

If nothing else, this is giving people a salutary distrust and cynicism about government and all its initiatives and all its way. Even, or perhaps particularly, those dressed up as “science.”

We’ve seen the quality of minds trying to force us to go their way. We’ve seen where they think their way leads, and we want none of it (thank you, you’ve explained quite enough. It’s time to let other points of view display themselves!) And we’ve seen where these things actually lead, and we also want none of it.

Resistance is also fighting back. Stick your feet down and resist with all your might.

We’re not stupid, and we’re not going.

Reprinted from According to Hoyt for March 19, 2022.