Sunday Thoughts May 07, 2023

The other day at breakfast, the conversation turned to darker topics, like the fate of the Marine who killed the lunatic on the subway. Someone turned to me and asked if I thought the Marine would avoid being charged. I said no and he will most likely be overcharged and be convicted. Everyone just nodded and it was at that point I realized I had moved into the optimist camp.

What I mean by that is normal people are watching this stuff and slowly moving to the pessimist camp, while I have not moved much at all. Five years ago, I was considered to be a pessimist, for warning about the response to Trump and many other things. The people who thought I was wrong about Covid now think it was a massive hoax. The world comes at you fast, as they say.

The reason the one guy asked me if I thought the Marine had a chance was that he was looking for a little hope, but even sunny optimists like me are running low on hope these days. The unrestrained assault on the legal system we are seeing is a sign that things are about to get much worse. It is one thing to exploit the law in the game of lawfare. It is another thing entirely to assault the law itself.

Pessimism should never be confused with despair. Life in normal times is the story of ups and downs, the former often tempting us more than the latter.  I am reminded of the story of Sir Sidney Smith, who was a British officer in the Napoleonic wars. He had been captured and thrown into a dungeon as he was the one British officer Napoleon truly feared. In prison he left Napoleon a note.

"Fortune's wheel makes strange revolutions, it must be confessed; but for the term revolution to be applicable, the turn of the wheel must be complete. You are today as high as you can be. Very well. I envy not your good fortune, for mine is better still. I am as low in the career of ambition as a man can well descend; so that, let this capricious dame, fortune, turn her wheel ever so little--I must necessarily mount, for the same reason you must descend."

Smither finished his note with, "I make not this remark to cause you any uneasiness, but rather to bring you that consolation which I shall feel when you are arrived at the same point where I now am--yes! at the same point where I now am. You will inhabit this same prison--why not as well as I? I no more thought of such a thing, than you do at present, before I was actually shut up in it."

Smith escaped the prison and was instrumental in defeating Napoleon in the Middle East. While Smith was present at Waterloo, he did not participate. He went on to do other things and was eventually knighted. Sidney New York is named after Sir Sidney Smith. Before Napoleon died, he is reported to have said of Smith, "That man made me miss my destiny.” Sir Sidney Smith is a lesson for all of us.

Topics

Self-Hatred (Link)

The Civil Theocracy (Link)

Persecuting Heretics (Link)

The War on The Law (Link)

Kill Whitey (Link)

American Terrorism (Link)

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