Who is Ephraim?

With regards to this older post of mine, I've recently come into a new idea that I think is an interesting compliment to it.

https://flippingfetchingfiddledeedee.blogspot.com/2016/05/ephraim-and-judah-part-i.html

Anyway, the idea comes from FrankN's comments here:

https://bellbeakerblogger.blogspot.com/2018/07/schnursprecher-glockensprecher.html

FrankN is a guest blogger at adnaera, a link I have on the side of my hobby blog, although it hasn't had a post in over a year now. (sad face) He's also a frequent poster at Eurogenes in the comments (another link I have on the side of my hobby blog) and, as seen above, he posts at Bell Beaker Blogger sometimes too (which, yes, I also have on the side of my hobby blog.) He gives support to Theo Vennemann's theory of a Semitic superstrate or adstrate in Germanic. Blodgett, in my first link above, assumes that to be Hebrew, FrankN assumes it to be Punic and related to the tin trade during the Bronze Age. The time depth is interesting; FrankN says that it has to be have happened before 500 BC; the Lost Tribes were carried away captive in 725 BC, and went "lost" in the year after that. That gives them a good ~200 years to have made their way "to the north country" which is usually defined as up near the headwaters of the Tigris and Euphrates in the Taurus Mountains, or somewhere else geographically close to that; i.e., the Caucasus region or thereabouts. From there, they would have had to make their way to the Nordic Bronze Age somehow, but with ~200 years to do so, that's hardly impossible. The Nordic Bronze Age people had clear trade links already with the Mediterranean world anyway, and links between them and the Bronze Age Mycenean Greeks have already been established, as well as links between them and their related Bronze Age steppe people much further to the east, like the Andronovo/Sintashta people. The Trundholm chariot and the Nebra Sky Disk are best explained with eastern written sources, after all. So routes and links from the Pontic steppes to the homeland of the Nordic Bronze Age were already probably in place for the Lost Tribes to putatively follow.

Another interesting aside; Eurogenes and others have pointed out that there is a strong line of evidence to suggest that the Nordic Bronze Age was bigger than traditionally defined, and probably included more territory along the Baltic, northern Germany, Pomerania and Estonia within its sphere. FrankN, in the comments linked above, also posits that linguistically he expects that proto-Germanic, defined as having undergone the sound shifts that create proto-Germanic, probably happened in the Iron Age during the Jastorf culture, but that that was a truncated picture of what was earlier a broader range of pre-proto-Germanic, or Germanic Parent Language, spoken much more widely; maybe even leftover from the Bell Beaker expansion, and it would have spread possibly as far as Britain in the West, Scandia in the North and the Danube in the east. It was the late expansion of Hallstatt an La Tene Celtic that curtailed its development and brought Celtic (and possibly some para-Celtic) to places that were earlier Germanic Parent language and may have developed into para-Germanic if it weren't for the Celtic expansion. 

This is in contrast to the Celtic from the West theory, which I also quite like, but FrankN's proposal would mean that the maritime beakers didn't give rise to Celtic and para-Celtic directly but rather to Germanic and para-Germanic, and the more traditional Halstatt expansion of Celtic is true after all. They're mutually exclusive.

From an emotional perspective, not that this matters at all to the truth, I don't really have a horse in that race. While I consider my culture to be Anglo-Saxon, and of course, I'm a native English speaker, my ancestry has a lot of Scottish, and the British identity (which is the parent group for the Heritage American identity, which I claim) has always had a deep and pervasive Brythonic Celtic substrate associated with it anyway, and the whole King Arthur tradition is Celtic in origin. I consider my identity to be as much Celtic as Germanic, and I'm happy with either one of them being spread across much of prehistoric Europe to have been replaced (linguistically, at any rate) with the other, maybe even twice in recursive form, without that being a blow to my pride in any way.

Trump's lessons

Today is supposed to be the Biden inauguration. There's a lot of weirdness in DC and elsewhere, and I don't know what it means. Some people believe that Trump has set a massive trap for everyone who stole the election, and will spring it later today. Some believe that the secret combination that stole our country is setting up a massive false flag operation, Joe Biden will be assassinated, and "white supremacists" will be blamed which will conclude the final stage of the "Color Revolution" and we'll be fully enslaved to a globalist secret combination. I make no predictions about anything. The only thing that I can say for certainty is that whatever the "official" narrative is, it's certainly false. But what exactly about it is false is up for debate. And of course, maybe there's just a no drama inauguration today, and nothing happens at all, and all of the weirdness was just weirdness. Although we'll still be enslaved to a globalist secret combination if that happens, of course. 

I've quoted the Z-man before several times on this blog. I like his stuff, because he has a real good breezy conversational style that manages to succinctly describe things in a way that is much more articulate and easy to digest than I can do. However, he's not always right, and his biggest failing is that he has no hope and no faith. This colors much of what he writes, and ultimately has made him less compelling to me than he used to be as I now see echoes of that strain of black-pill in much of his observations. That said, he still has plenty to say that's helpful, and I think that this observation about "The Trump Phenomena" is on point, regardless of what happens later today, or in the coming weeks, months and even years.

There are three lessons here. One is that Trump could never have existed without the realty of the masses that supported him. He was just a front runner, a guy who jumped to the head of a wave of people coming to terms with the fact that we are entering a new era of politics. With or without Trump, those people exist and will continue to exist with the same grievances and concerns. Just because the dull knight vanquished their champion, does not mean they cease to exist.

Another lesson is there is no way to reform this system. The sort of person who can win an election is either a careerist sellout like every member of the GOP or an outlandish outsider with no ability to govern. The only way forward for dissidents is to focus on building outside the system. A third of all adults and close to half of white people no longer think the system is legitimate. Every day the people in charge convert more people to this view with their authoritarian actions.

The final lesson here is that the old political labels are no longer relevant. That is what the Trump era demonstrated. It is no longer about conservative versus liberal or red team versus blue team. It is not socialism versus capitalism. It is about those who live in the lie of liberal democracy and those who live in the truth. If you live in the truth, you not only oppose the people running the system, but you also oppose the system that allows these criminal aliens to rule over us.

There's a lot to parse there, especially in the second and third paragraphs. Let's start with the second:

First off, his observations about Trump are often banal. He's not an outlandish caricature in real life, that's just the Z-man's perspective on him. Trump was perfectly capable of governing normal people, but the Deep State secret combination was ungovernable through traditional means. There are only two things that they recognize: 1) their own Mafia-like heirarchy, and 2) being put down by force the way that the Lamanites or the Gadianton robbers were put down at times when the Nephites were still relatively righteous but their enemies had grown to a position of strength too. Sadly, I'm not sure that the American nation, and the various others who live in America with the Americans, even those who are more or less righteous themselves, are righteous enough to match that of the Nephites during Captain Moroni's time, or Lachoneus' time.

Then again, many members of the Church share similarly banal and ridiculous notions about Trump. Curiously, given the date, these same members of the Church who recoil from Trump because... because what; he's been divorced and remarried a couple of times and his personal conversation isn't as dignified as they'd like, I think, just got done worshipping the false idol of Martin Luther King, Jr.—and presumably they accept all of the propaganda used to dismiss the rock-solid evidence of the FBI that he was a wife abuser, swinging adulturer and full-on communist.

As for the nihilistic black-pill in the third paragraph; he's right, to a point. Liberal democracy has failed spectacularly, and it's been allowed to fester and rot to the point that it can't be easily reformed. But the failing was one that the Founding Fathers themselves noted and predicted, and there is a solution to it. John Adams famously said that "Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other." See, that's where America went wrong. Not in the adoption of liberal democracy, but in the fact that we are no longer a moral and religious people. To exacerbate that problem, we have allowed predatory (or perhaps parasitic) peoples to come here in large numbers and seek out rentier roles within our society who do not share the same moral and religious traditions we do, and have therefore corrupted our institutions to the point where they are not just ungovernable, but outright hostile to the American people.

Sadly, that's not a problem that's as easily solved as a simple policy change or social program. The Z-man is correct in that right vs left is less important, red vs blue is supremely unimportant (in fact, given the blatant fact that blue will steal elections regardless of who actually won them, voting at all seems superfluous going forward). But the Z-man is missing the mark on what is true and what isn't. It's about those who follow the Gospel of Jesus Christ and those who reject it for a variety of false idols. Liberalism, prior to the Progressive era, helped to usher people towards the Gospel. It was part of the long-running foundation that God allowed to take place among the Gentiles in preparation for their receiving the Restoration. Without liberalism of that variety, there wouldn't be any restored truth to cling to. But liberalism since the progressive era is just one of many faces of the great and abominable church. He's correct to note it's falsehood, but incorrect in the alternative that he offers up in its place.

(I'll note that his next post about the Trump Lessons is considerably better. I'll quote portions of that too.)

The installation of Joe Biden as president marks the end of the old civic nationalist America and the beginning of the new managerial state. Competitive elections and open debate of the old era have been swept away in favor of ceremonial elections and speech codes. The managerial class has formally seized control of the country.

No one can look at what is going on in the country and think any of it is normal or that returning to normal is possible. Even if Washington wanted to return to normalcy, the last few months cannot be unseen. Joe Biden will take the oath of office behind layers of razor wire, guarded more than a full army division. The imperial capital looks like it is under occupation and it very well may remain this way. The new regime is extremely paranoid, convulsed by increasingly bizarre conspiracy theories.

This is the big lesson of the Trump years. The nature and psychology of the managerial class began to transform after the end of the Cold War. Little by little it was becoming a closed and insulated culture sitting atop of the general culture. The system looked the same from the outside, two parties competing for votes and the right to dispense the benefits of power, but inside it was changing. It was becoming a distinct culture and the people in that culture were becoming class aware.

Viewed in this context, the 2016 election of Donald Trump was the catalyst for the final phase of this process, the end of which is unfolding now.  The political system in America is now a closed shop, like a sports league. Just as you cannot buy a sports team without first being approved by the other owners, you can no longer win a federal election without first being vetted by the managerial class. The razor wire barriers are the manifestation of this closing of the managerial elite.

It is not just the political marketplace that has been closed off. America is no longer a market economy. This is another thing that has accelerated into plain sight during the Trump years. The shuttering of the social media site Parler is a great example of how the marketplace no longer exists in a conventional sense. All of its vendors gave up their business with the company, because the people running those firms are loyal to their class, not the abstract principles of the marketplace.

This will become increasingly clear as the new regime takes control. The big economic players like the banks or the tech giants are no longer subject to the marketplace in any meaningful way. For example, if angry consumers swore off Amazon, not much would change for Amazon as they control the logistics for the companies those angry consumers would use in place of Amazon. Mastercard can back list anyone because they are a part of a cartel that has no competition.

This will be the hardest lesson for people to accept. Every generation of Americans walking the earth right now has been conditioned to believe the marketplace is the final arbiter of all disputes. Despite all that has gone on, most people cannot accept that there is no marketplace in large swaths of the economy. They still respond to the bogeyman of socialism, despite the fact America has been a socialist country for close to a century now. We are now a command-and-control economy.

Of course, all of this is coming with something even more ominous. For example, the tech giants volunteered to work with the FBI to get the protestors they have now labeled insurrectionists, which is an important change in tone. This public-private partnership comes naturally, as the people involved see one another as members of the same class, at war with the same enemy. Silicon Valley is officially the signal intelligence arm of the surveillance state.

This year the regime will roll out the Covid passports, which will be required to get on public transport. Soon, they will be required to do anything. This is the beginning of the social credit system, where your internal passport is essentially a report card that is constantly updated based on your behavior. It starts with public health but will quickly moves to public safety. Surveillance capitalism will come into full bloom tarted up with the language of public safety and defending democracy.

In total, what the Trump phenomenon has revealed is the America most people thought was their country is gone. Politically, economically, demographically, and culturally, the old American has been replaced with this new society. The great reset, as the new regime bills it, is a dictatorship of the managerial class. That class is now largely closed off to the rest of us. Just as the nomenklatura had the house on the embankment, the managerial class has the walled institutions.

This is why the new regime is willing to bust up many of the institutions that had been instrumental in creating. Public distrust of the media is no longer important, as the new class is no longer subject to the voters. The media companies no longer worry about the audience, because what are you going to do, start your own Amazon? Create your own Hollywood? Mitch McConnell supports another impeachment, because he knows the party system is a farce. His loyalty to his class is what matters.