Back to Basics

Midterms will take place (or, some say, close) three weeks from today. And the American people seem to have decided: it’s time to get back to basics. The Democratic Party, with their control of the Presidency and both chambers of Congress, have ruined the basics. This Midterms, the American people will take the first step to removing them from power. As long as the basics were in place, the Democrats could indulge whatever social and (a)moral fantasies they pleased. But when they ruined the economy, the people cried, “Enough!” As we hear them crying today. Three weeks plus one day from now, we’ll hear a different outcry from a different quarter.

What makes people get back to basics?

The terrible economy of today, will make America repeat similar back to basics movements in the past. We have seen this, not only in America but throughout the history of civilization, Western and Eastern. Periods of affluence cause people to forget the things that brought them that affluence. They indulge the flesh, and more than that, indulge a wider variety of fantasies. Then disaster strikes. The economy crashes and destroys the affluent first. An external enemy launches a sneak attack. Then the people get back to basics. And the basics are the things that will put food on the table and keep it there. They also include the moral sense that lets a society run.

Every society has a measure of this cycle, without exception. In America, and elsewhere in the Western world, we have the Hemline Index. Hemlines follow stocks, up or down, the theory states. How has this theory kept its predictive power? Because hemlines actually follow the comfort level, real or illusory, of society’s members and more particularly its women. Prices of stocks and other securities are only one measure of the security one might feel.

The American economy today

The Heritage Foundation has pulled off the real October Surprise, which should surprise no one. Mike Vance at the Daily Patriot Report has the story. Americans are six thousand dollars a month poorer today than at the pResident’s inauguration. Mr. E. J. Antoni of the Heritage Foundation explains everything below to Fox News:

No matter how Biden tries to spin the numbers, Americans understand the reality of the economic crisis they are living through every day.

That crisis affects them where they live, when basic, necessary staples cost so much they must skip meals. As E. J. Antoni explains:

People are just absolutely being crushed. It’s not the price of caviar and yachts that are driving these numbers. It’s necessities, it’s staples. It’s things like eggs, milk, flour, soup. These are things that are up 20 or 30 percent year-over-year.

And the American people know whom to blame:

Inflation was 1.4% when Biden took office — it was essentially non-existent. And somehow, in just 18 months, he ran it up to over 9%. Again, it really is like these people live in a fantasy world. It’s mind-boggling.

You’ve heard the pResident and his fellow Democrats try to deny it. But they can’t, and they know it. We know that they know it, because now they’re trying to blame the Republicans. In fact, the pResident actually says,

If Republicans win, inflation’s going to get worse. It’s that simple.

No, Mr. pResident. You’re lying; that’s what’s simple.

When else have we seen societies have to get back to basics?

Actually we can look back to the ancient Hebrews, who had split into two rival civilizations in 975 BC. Specifically, we can examine the time of the reign of Jeroboam II of Israel (Samaria), and Kings Amaziah and Uzziah of Judah. II Kings tells us little about his reign, but Amos, one of the “Minor Prophets,” tells us plenty. Jeroboam’s subjects divided themselves into two classes, the affluent and the impoverished. (No such thing as a middle class existed.) His affluent subjects behaved cruelly to the impoverished ones, and indulged all sorts of pleasures, pleasures of the table as well as the bed. Amos warned them that a time would come when they would lose it all.

They didn’t listen. Jeroboam died after a forty-one-year reign, and his son succeeded him. His reign was appallingly brief, for a Royal army officer killed him and took his throne. Thus Israel became a banana kingdom without the bananas, as king killed king in turn. (Exception: King Menachem managed to pass the throne on to his son. But, two years later, another assassin continued the regicide cycle.) King Hosea, last of the Regicides, lost everything to an external conqueror (Shalmaneser V, King of Assyria).

The Kingdom of Judah would face its own crisis, from Shalmaneser’s son Sennacherib. But Judah had a king (Hezekiah) who showed better sense. He tried paying tribute, but learned fast that tribute never satisfies. So he asked for God’s help—and he got it.

The experience of other civilizations

Civilizations face their most challenging tests often at the height of their affluence, especially when they consider themselves unassailable. On a site on the southern shore of the Dardanelles, nine cities have sprung up, flourished, then died. This site, of course, we call Troy. The sixth or seventh city of that name is the one, under King Priam, that went up in flames after a ten-year siege by the Achaean League (Mycenae, Sparta, Ithaca, Boeotia, and other city-states). They, too, considered their city impregnable, and derived their income from laying tolls on every ship that passed the Dardanelles (called the Hellespont in those days).

The Achaean League laid siege to them at last. (The elopement of Sparta’s Queen Helen might or might not have been the final provocation.) For ten years their walls held. Finally the besiegers pretended to leave, and left behind a tall wooden horse on wheels. This was an open invitation, and the Trojans took it. The problem was that the horse was full of soldiers, under the command of King Odysseus of Ithaca. With the result everyone knows.

The Roman Empire had several boom-and-bust cycles. In fact the Civil Wars that began when Caesar crossed the Rubicon, and ended when Augustus chased Antony and Cleopatra into Alexandria, where they killed themselves, bankrupted Rome. Augustus took things in hand and brought Rome back from the brink. Not all his successors were as wise. In 454, Rome, even more decadent than ancient Northern Israel, finally fell.

The details of American decadence

American history classically includes boom and bust. Americans definitely got back to basics in the Nineteen Thirties. Marconi, who invented radio, had television ready to produce. But after October 1929, no one could afford it. Radio and motion pictures would be as much entertainment as Americans had, through the Depression and the Second World War. Americans also accepted the Motion Picture Production Code and the Production Code Authority (the Hays Office). They likely accepted such things because the spectacle of indulgence in the pleasures of the flesh would have revolted them. Such indulgence was all very well in the Roaring Twenties. It had no place in a society that had to get back to basics. (The Hemline Index probably got its start in the transition from the Flapper style of the Twenties to more conservative women’s fashion in the Thirties.)

After the War came a very brief downturn, which ended abruptly when President Harry S. Truman cut taxes. Prosperity came back – and with it the same kinds of indulgences the Twenties had seen. More than women’s fashion would illustrate this. Permissiveness of every kind began to take hold, and has definitely held sway during the Roe era (1973-2022). In fact such permissiveness took hold in the late Sixties. A spirit of indulgence has corrupted every institution for about sixty years, during which time the people have turned aside from the basics to experiment even with how their bodies work.

Back to basics before it’s too late

An unprecedented series of disasters has brought home the stern distinction between fantasy and reality. Never mind the theories that the Election of 2020 did not have a just result. That result could have come from a Divine intervention much like the “hardening of Pharaoh’s heart” before the Exodus. Sometimes God shows us how important the basics are, by letting people turn away from them and see what happens.

Who wouldn’t want to get back to basics now? E. J. Antoni has explained the economic situation. But enough people seem to have heeded the call already. True, the American Medical Association has gone all-in on not only defending their experiments on children, but wanting federal authorities to prosecute anyone who objects. We also remember the National School Boards Association demanding something similar. But now parents, many of whom were willing to toy with fantastic notions of remaking human beings, are recoiling. “We didn’t sign on for any of this!” they seem to be crying out.

Well, even if they did, they’re not any longer. Such parents elected Glenn Youngkin Governor of Virginia. Recently he told school authorities that the era of indulging in child experimentation, or pretending that any student is not what he or she is, is over. High-school students, still the dupes of the would-be experimenters, walked out of class on the strength of it. (Source: WTVR-TV, Channel 6, Richmond, Virginia.) Governor Youngkin is unmoved. His message is plain: we’re getting back to basics.

And now to Midterms

And so are the American people. Briefly, over the summer, the Democrats told themselves they could save themselves by plumping for permissiveness in another area. The Supreme Court, in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s, gave them cause to so pretend. (Or they skewed the polls.) But as CNAV pointed out, Dobbs was not the final answer to that particular kind of indulgence. We said after the Great Leak that such indulgence would decline ten percent nationwide. We also predicted the Democrats would nominate fanatics that would make even more people shudder – and vote against them.

But most of all we predicted no effect on Midterms, except to harden certain hearts. We see that today. Inflation has gotten worse, not better, since the pResident first started trying to take credit for beating it. After first cutting off our own oil supply, the pResident tried to persuade Saudi Arabia to sell oil sand-cheap. The Saudis essentially showed him the soles of their shoes (one of the Arab world’s deadliest insults). They cut production, and told the world what the pResident tried to demand of them. Prices of motor fuels already are rising again, and this time the pResident can’t stop it.

More to the point, Jimmy Carter’s Misery Index continues to climb. This pResident will thus “lose” for the same reason Jimmy Carter did. The people will get back to basics, and the Democrats can’t dissuade them.