A New Status Quo
And, Esoterica: Progress vs. the Illusion of Progress
Hello Friends,
Things in the immediate area seem to be entering a new sort of short-term status quo as far as Operation Lone Star and the Border Crisis are concerned.
As some might have predicted, increased enforcement and State Trooper presence in Eagle Pass & Maverick County seems to have had an effect on some of the activity in Kinney County. It is no exaggeration to say that Eagle Pass is probably ground zero for most of the border pressure in the State of Texas right now.
There’s an argument to be made that parts of Arizona have it worse without the natural barrier of the Rio Grande and smaller Border Patrol presence.
Right now it is routine for Eagle Pass to see groups of asylum seekers in the 100s or more, to say nothing of the scattered dozens of traffickers and others that are trying to avoid law enforcement, and using the asylum seekers to screen their movements.
Most of the activity in Kinney County seems to be on the highways, though there still is a noticeable measure of foot-traffic slipping through the ranches— especially in the areas closest to Maverick County, but as one local brush cutter puts it, the sheer numbers are down: “The word is out— they know if they’re coming through Kinney County, they have to work for it, we’re seeing the most determined guys who have no choice but to come here because that’s their cartel’s allowed territory.”
One detects a certain note of pride in the statement— earned pride, perhaps, as what’s become the County Brush Team in parallel to the DPS Brush Teams, has been working very hard as the state has re-tasked some of the resources that were in Kinney County.
It’s not all wine and roses however, as published this week in the Kinney County Post, there are concerns that the funding that’s supporting the Galveston Crew is going to run out. “The impact of the Galveston Crew cannot be overstated,” is how Sheriff Brad Coe is quoted on the subject. The Galveston Crew is the informal title used for the loose assembly of Galveston County Sheriff’s Deputies and Deputy Constables that have been coming to Kinney County for the last year or so, assisting in everything from highway interdiction to courtroom security.
New readers may wonder, “Why Galveston?” Long story short, the Sheriff and Constables from places two and four in Galveston County felt it would be worthwhile to see if they could affect the flow of fentanyl and sex trafficking headed toward the island, and responded to the call for help early on as the Border Crisis began. They’re in the area as part of an agreement of mutual aid, though it must be admitted that Kinney County isn’t really in a position to return the favor.
The only stipulation from the County Judge in Galveston is that any personnel be volunteers, no voluntelling. They rotate in and out on a roughly 2-week basis. Some of the volunteers say they see it as a way to give back to another stricken area of the state, after seeing how the rest of Texas pitches in every time tropical weather slams into Galveston. There’s some confidence that money will be found in Operation Lone Star to support their continued presence in Kinney County, but there are of course no guarantees in life and tomorrow is promised to no one.
One minor change in the pace of things in Kinney County is reflected in how the Sheriff doesn’t have the same amount of time to devote to “spoiling” visiting press. It’s a minor thing, but worth noting— up until recently, one of the components of the response to the crisis has been the Sheriff’s willingness to spend hours with visiting reporters, driving them down to the riverbanks and showing them much of what there was to be seen. But now, it seems a thing of the past, with steady meetings with State overseers tracking Operation Lone Star expenditures, and budget meetings with County leadership. Between these administrative tasks, and the increased logistical challenges that come of increased prosecutions, increased arrests, and the need for increased training for local deputies, there’s been much less time for visiting out-of-state press dropping into Maverick County and thinking they might swing by Kinney County on short notice while in the area.
Right now, the main thing moving below the surface that people need to keep eyes on, are the ongoing efforts to get local counties to declare states of invasion. At the moment, Kinney County is eager to distribute declaration templates and answer any questions other county governments may have about the process, and has been sending the relevant materials to those counties that have inquired. It has been a challenge to keep track of what counties have made formal declarations. It’s hoped that they’ll send copies of their declarations back, but some have, and some haven’t.
The list of counties that have made declarations changes week-to-week, and it can be confusing at times, as the process begins with a declaration by a County Judge, and then can be ratified and supported by their respective County Commissioners, usually at the very next Commissioner’s Court. So far the list consists of: Atascosa, Edwards, Goliad, Kinney, Maverick, Parker, Presidio, and Terrell Counties, as well as the City of Uvalde.
The invasion declarations are mostly ceremonial efforts at the local level— meant to pressure Governor Greg Abbott and Attorney General Ken Paxton to do likewise, which would activate clauses in the U.S. and Texas Constitutions, and allow DPS and other state agencies to respond more directly to the crisis. At the very least, one imagines it would help clear up all this confusion in mainstream press about whether or not DPS is “interfering” in immigration. A sort of “Alexandrian solution” to the Gordian knot of what’s happening on the border.
We’re going to link a recent article in the Center Square about all this: here. It features some comments by one of Ken Paxton’s underlings that appear to be way off of the mark. In the man’s defense, he may not be directly involved with the issue.
And finally this morning— something that’s been lurking heavily on the mind since reading it a few days back. Billionaire venture capitalist Peter Thiel recently took aim at the subject of progress and the illusion of it, and how it explains certain ills plaguing us all today.
Thiel seems to say that many of our social cancers are the result of a failure to find any true progress in culture or science in the last several decades, outside of a few discrete areas. And the dysfunctions that we’ve all begun to notice are the result of cognitive dissonance as we try and fool ourselves into thinking that everything is fine— that we continue to progress onwards and upwards, when in many real ways we are not.
Thiel is described in some quarters as a conservative, but some conservatives would seem to barely tolerate the man considering his homosexuality. Thiel was dragged out of the closet some years ago, by the online magazine empire Gawker, which outed him.
Like some kind of an ambush predator, Thiel waited for years, until Hulk Hogan had grounds for a lawsuit and then financially backed that suit to the hilt. Legally speaking, the two tag-teamed the Gawker Media group into a figure-four-suplex and top rope finish— breaking them. Is that real wrestling jargon? Dunno. Maybe.
The episode clearly made an impact on yours truly— marking the man as not only wealthy and successful, but possessed of a rare sort of patience and willingness to get payback.
Odds are good you haven’t seen Thiel’s comments on American progress widely publicized— they showed up online in a publication called “Unherd.” Not familiar with it, personally, but the interview is thought-provoking, and alarming, if one is convinced that Thiel has a point.
Writer Mary Harrington begins by describing the man as a sort of modern-day Lorenzo de’ Medici:
In his view, much of what passes for “progress” is in truth more like “distraction”. As he puts it, “the iPhone that distracts us from our environment also distracts us from the ways our environment is unchanging and static.” And in this culture, economy and politics of chronic self-deception, as Thiel sees it, we tell ourselves that we’re advancing because “grandma gets an iPhone with a smooth surface,” but meanwhile she “gets to eat cat food because food prices have gone up.”
In this context, Thiel argues, much of what passes as “progress” in economic terms is actually an accounting trick. For example, much of what looks like GDP growth since the Fifties was simply a matter of changing how we measured the value bundled up in family life. If, he points out, “you shift an economy from a single-income household with a homemaker to one with two breadwinners and a third person who’s a child-carer, statistically you have three jobs instead of one and therefore you have more GDP, and you will exaggerate the amount of progress that’s happened”.
That is: if what you’re calling “progress” is not so much a change in the activities taking place, but rather a change in how you’re measuring those activities, in what sense has anything really changed, let alone improved? After all, he points out, between 1880 and 1960 automation so far reduced working hours that analysts predicted by the year 2000 the average family would subsist happily on the wage of one worker putting in seven hours a day, four days a week, with 13 weeks’ paid holiday. But then “it somehow went really into reverse”.
Since then, many goods once common to America’s middle class have been cannibalised to preserve the illusion of progress. “We are much less of a middle-class society,” he points out, in the sense of “people who think their children will do better than themselves”. And this growing scarcity, coupled with denial of that scarcity, has profoundly corrupted once-trusted institutions. Even the Club of Rome was, in his view, “not pessimistic enough about how badly a zero-growth world would work, and how much it would derange our institutions”. For most of our institutions “depend on growth; and when the growth stops, they lie and they become sociopathic”.
—Writer Mary Herrington, @Unherd, Quoting Peter Thiel on the Illusion of Progress
Pretty hot stuff no? That’s just a scratch of the surface, readers. Wait until he starts talking about woke culture. We’re not even going to try going much deeper here. You really ought to read the whole thing, for a sort of high-level glimpse of what seems to be happening right now. We made reference to Alexander and the Gordian knot earlier. This kind of high-level thinking and problem assessment will be necessary if we’re ever going to find a short, elegant sword-cut solution to these seemingly impossibly complicated issues that bedevil us.
It’s interesting to note, given the immigration component of our normal sphere of coverage at the Dispatch: Thiel is foreign-born. West-German originally, coming to the U.S. at 1-year-old.
Highly encourage you to read the whole thing— we’re linking to it again: here.
Supporters of a populist democracy may disagree with some of the writer’s final conclusions but it’s all still worth your awareness.
And that should do it for now.
As always, this newsletter and any opinions, errors or other misdeeds contained within are entirely our own, and should not be taken as any kind of official expression of Kinney County policy.
Have a great day. As the weekend beckons, try and keep it straight and level and between the lines, and we’ll see you again soon.
Well, ya done it this time. Guess I'll have to read Thiel three more times to digest it. But one thing caught my eye.
"To my eye, Peter Thiel isn’t an aberration in an otherwise seamless march of democratic progress, but a reversion to the historic norm. Or to put it another way: I’m coming to suspect the democratic era was a flash in the pan, and what’s now emerging is a 21st century variation on an ancient form of power, more monarchic or feudal in character than “populist”, let alone democratic."
That's pretty accurate; and it's something that started shortly after the industrial revolution when the power players realized the common man might slip through their fingers and become independent. Yes, the ultimate goal is to reduce the population and return to a kingdom mentality with petty vassal states controlled by dukes and earls served by their subjects. Of course, it's projected to be a global enterprise. And it's doomed to failure in the end.
Thanks for a thought-provoking article.