The Last Word
Commentary for 9 October 2016
By J.R. Nyquist
"The problem today is that people are so monstrously self-centered that they are incapable of viewing themselves as anything other than the sole [beneficiaries] and culmination of history when in fact we are all just bricks in the road of time that stretches in front of us. Everyone has been taught that every single person is born for earthly glory, fame and riches, and anything that falls short of that just can't be right and certainly can't be God's will. I have had, on more than one occasion, Christian people say to me with a completely straight face, 'What purpose can a person serve and what good can they do if they're dead?'
-Ann Barnhardt
To clarify Barnhardt’s statement, especially with regard to many of our elected officials: “What purpose can they serve, and what good can they do if they’re alive?” If the chief objective is to live, and to gain a high office, then what happens to the truth? For the politician must tell the voter what he wants to hear. In that event, if the politician lives and thrives and gains high office – what wins?
Untruth, corruption, and treason.
Untruth preserves the political careerist. He advances up the ladder, step by step. Watch him carefully. If he had died as an infant, society would have been blessed. But he lives, and advances. And the Devil has his soul. He must follow a path ordained by Hell. Or else he must fall martyr to some unwelcomed truth.
Recently General Mark A Milley, U.S. Army Chief of Staff stated: “While the Army is reducing end-strength, we made a deliberate decision to prioritize readiness.” (In other words, we are exceptionally ready; but our forces are shrinking in size.)
Milley does not explain the situation in clear language. He uses the term "reducing end-strength." He makes a virtue of readiness and obfuscation. But how ready is a force too small to prevail? It is a funny kind of readiness. And yet General Milley lives and advances.
Milley might ask: “What purpose can a person serve and what good can they do if they’re not promoted to the rank of general?” And what a general! For then, perhaps, many brave men would not die from a readiness to be ambushed by a superior enemy.
On 5 October General Milley said, “I want to be clear to those who wish to do us harm … the United States military – despite all of our challenges, despite our [operational] tempo, despite everything we have been doing – we will stop you and we will beat you harder than you have ever been beaten before. Make no mistake about that.”
But Milley is the one who is making a mistake. For despite his readiness, he is unready. He is not prepared. He is outnumbered.
He makes the same noise that Napoleon III made in 1870, before Sedan. It is the same noise that Col. Custer made before the Little Bighorn. The U.S. Army is small, and it is outnumbered, and it has a peculiar chief with a peculiar name. nonetheless, the country craves reassurance at a time of growing national weakness. And the general will give reassurance if he gives nothing else. We do not want to admit we are weak. We want to continue the pleasant business of denying Russia’s strength, and China’s military preparations.
General Milley quoted the Russian Ambassador to Britain as follows: “The Established world order is undergoing a foundational shakeup…. Russia can now fight a conventional war in Europe and win.” Oh yes, that is what the Russians are saying. Even as these words are written, U.S. President Barack Obama pushes for war in Syria.
Why does he do this?
You ought to know. You ought to have been paying better attention. Obama opposed the war in Iraq. Why does he want a war in Syria? Why does he provoke a war with Russia? The Russian government has said they will go to nuclear war if the U.S. attacks Syria. They have told this to the Russian people. They held a massive civil defense exercise last week. They are getting ready for nuclear war.
Why does Obama push for war?
Obama says that a humanitarian catastrophe is unfolding in Syria. Therefore we must bomb Syria and go to war with Russia. In this way Obama prevents a loss of life – by causing a nuclear war in which millions die. This is necessary to save thousands in Aleppo.
The sanctimonious press nods in agreement. They were never masters of logic. What is logic good for anyway?
Civic courage is not something they understand. One person takes a hit for telling the truth. Then another takes a hit. This does not help one's career. And they live for their careers, and so they have always lived on their knees (to a lie).
“What purpose can a person serve and what good can they do if they're dead?” Thus the question was put to Ann Barnhardt. Yes, indeed. If they stood for the truth, if they fought for their country, if they did something heroic and important – what possible good might come?
That safe, rational world – without feeling, without love, without patriotism, without passion – is cowardly, and in the end this cowardice brings retreat. It results in the promotion of anti-generals, anti-patriots, who are very much alive, and have climbed into high office. They cannot reflect the sentiments of dead heroes. They are the opposite of heroes. Inwardly hollow, out-of-order, full of lies. Drunk on ideology and socialism. They worship an idol made in their own hollow likeness. These fragmented beings, made of hot air and cardboard, are at odds with themselves, unable to make sense of anything – they are our leaders, our pundits, our professors. Yes, and we have applauded them. We have made love to their Gold Calf.
In his book on Nietzsche, Erich Heller wrote: “The only truly unfathomable faculty of man is love.” But he did not mean the kind of love that meanly clings to life. He meant the kind that heroically clings to truth. This truth is grounded in propriety, in goodness; and not, as Heller warned, in that plebian betrayal of truth which modern intellectuals tend to favor, especially in their “sniggering suspicion of the absence of meaning in anything that evades definition or experimental proof….” It is our disregard for what is noble that damns us. It is our disregard for truth.
Again, the question posed to Ann Barnhardt: What purpose can a person serve and what good can they do if they're dead?
By this question we are to understand that the truth is irrelevant. But in reality, it is death that is irrelevant. What matters is our faithfulness to truth while we live.
