THE ROBERT W. WHITAKER ARCHIVE

Our Brit commenter actually met Enoch Powell. Said commenter was a dedicated Conservative, and he asked Powell how the next election would turn out. He was shocked when Powell replied, "It doesn't make the slightest difference."

A classical scholar and gentleman like Powell put it his way. You see how I said it. Mine is the English to Redneck Translation. What interests me is from my own institutional memory. A usual, "both sides" have predictable attitudes.

Then there is mine.

In my lifetime public opinion has moved in MY direction. But liberals and respectable conservatives get PAID not to notice that my position exists. I have pointed out that the minute socialism got discredited the new fad became environmentalism. Every single socialist instantly became an environmentalist. No respectable conservative notes this. In fact, the big dogs in respectable conservatism are so well trained - the competition for their jobs is intense - that none of them NOTICED this fact.

So there are now "both sides" in the intense debate over environmentalism, just as there was over whether or not Communism was a smart system. Socialism and environmentalism were harnessed to create a world ruled by professors. Respectable conservatives make a living not noticing the basics.

So in the case of the 2008 election, everybody but the pros is storming to OUR side. It is important that I REMEMBER other elections in a STEADY progression. The 1952 election, 1956, 1960, 1964, 1968 were considered CRITICAL the future. Hell, I worked my butt off in them. Since then, you could draw a chart to show the steady decline in THIS attitude.

Not in "voter participation." Not in voter information. In the attitude that it MATTERS. I wish readers would get a very clear idea of the EXACT point I am making, it would save me a LOT of effort.

Outside of National Review and the national media, I cannot find ANYBODY who really thinks it matters who wins in 2008. There will be no changes INSIDE the political system. It is as rock-solid now as the Soviet nomenclature was in 1980.

The people tried in 1980 and got no basic change of DIRECTION. A few years of semi rationality, which caused a boom and ended the Oil Crisis and the fall of the Soviet Empire is a LOT. But the direction did not change. They tried again in 1992, when Perot was actually in the lead when he dropped out. They tried in 1994.

Nothing happened. Nobody believes that the 2008 election will make the slightest difference.

Mine, by the way, is not the THIRD position relative to "both sides." In this case, the third position envisions huge torchlight parades in which the people take over the government, and the Good Guys, the ones with the "guts" to TAKE IT T THE STREETS are triumphant.

Then there are the libertarians who sway that we can just forget all that stuff, open up the borders, and things will adjust themselves according to the Magical Market System.

Another position was best summed up by a liberal in a discussion show who said that gun control would come when another and worse Columbine incident occurred. He was almost visibly licking his chops. Gore types look for the time when we are all choking to death in the streets from pollution. They join in the chorus, "Worse is better, disaster is perfect!" with right-wingers.

At the end of the last millennium, the whole Christian world was looking for the End of the World on January 1, 1000 AD. This time the whole world was looking for a computer collapse exactly a thousand years later, FYI 2000. They had been shouting about it at each other for years.

Meanwhile the grownups had fixed it.

Meanwhile I am looking for what WILL change things. I am constantly lectured about how things will not change, because they do not change along the lines all the sides predict. None of the sides had the slightest idea that the Soviet Empire was going under (least of all the CIA). Nobody now has any idea what the will change things. But change they will.

Big time.

I know that because they HAVE changed. Not the way you WANT them to. Not the way your particular historical point of view says they should. In every generation morons who call themselves Practical Men point to the power of the Ruling Groups, get the grim and wise expression on their faces of a cow chewing its cud, and pronounce that things will always go in the same direction.

Then the same people do the same thing when the system collapses and a NEW Immovable Power, ANOTHER Unchangeable Direction takes over. And for fifty years I have had to deal with the latest news from these twits.

I am trying to find what will really happen. Stories about what Hillary is planning in the Bilderbergers have ceased to amuse me. The Only True Strategy has ceased to amuse me.

Trying to make the same point over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and then have someone bring it up again because it was in the paper has ceased to amuse me.

I am SICK of old drunks at conventions shouting, "Mao/Lenin/Hitler said that 'power comes from the barrel of a gun!"

The truth is not Out There. It's In Here. Because we are not trying to look Rough and Realistic or to raise money for a pet project or to fit into any of the umpteen sides. The truth is an independent entity.

You can elect McCain, lynch Hillary - PLEASE don't give me the old "That would be nice" joke! - you can rape a whale or start a newspaper. But while you are concentrating on that, time is passing, the world is changing.

I have yet to meet one single racialist outside of ME who is talking about the PRACTICAL effect on MY cause of designer babies. That is because they are interested in torchlight parades and whatever they choose to call Aryan Values. They have little interest in race, per se.

I have read futurology and if you look at the 1939 World Fair, it was dedicated to the Inevitable Future. But while we dismiss anybody who shouts that electing Hillary/McCain or whatever doesn't matter, we still take Practical Men and Prophets of Doom and the same old parade of clowns seriously.

Pick your friggin' HEAD UP, gang! There's a whole WORLD out there, and the one thing I can guarantee is that it won't look like the torchlighters and pessimists and futurologists say it will.