“We’re just one election away from
full-blown socialism,” a man recently said to me during a short conversation.
This sentiment has become increasingly common lately, even, notably, among the
previously apolitical. Yet something is overlooked:
In keeping with President Reagan’s observation, “Freedom is never more
than one generation away from extinction,” being one election away from
tyranny means that not enough people noticed and took action when we were one
generation away — or two or three.
Also perhaps overlooked is
that being one election away from tyranny now means we’ll be one election away
after the next election — whatever happens November 3. The point
is that politics being downstream from culture (and, really, from morality,
faith and philosophy), this isn’t merely a “moment.” It’s not a fashion. It
won’t just pass. And we need be prepared for things to come.
I’ve often
cited late Soviet defector Yuri Bezmenov, who in 1980s interviews warned
of “demoralization” — an undermining of a nation’s morality that makes it ripe
for leftist revolution — in America. As a young man in my late teens or early
twenties at the time, I didn’t know about Bezmenov (no Internet back then). But
I’d recently become more intensely “politically” aware and quickly realized,
and began telling people, that the West and the U.S. were in decline and
gravitating toward tyranny. Oh,
I did realize the republic’s demise was decades away.
Now I suspect it’s years away.
General Michael Flynn, whom, it’s clear, was targeted by the Creep
State for being a good man, just warned that
if we don’t act, two percent of the people are about to control the other 98
percent. But I’m here to tell you: Long term, voting won't save us.
Oh, for sure, get out and vote in November as if your life depends
on it (because in a way, it does). But as was the case in 2016, a Trump victory
and partial GOP control of Congress only amount to a “stay of execution.” The
clock is ticking.
Moreover, President Trump’s re-election, like his election, would
have to defy the odds. Along with traditional media bias — which a college
professor determined aids Democrat candidates by 8 to 10 points every
election (an underestimation, I believe) — there’s now social media/Big Tech
bias. According to liberal psychologist Dr. Robert Epstein’s research, this
factor can shift up to 15
million votes toward one party or the other (not an overestimation, I
believe). This is enough to turn any modern election.
Add to this vote fraud and vote
harvesting — the latter of which flipped
conservative Orange County, Calif., from GOP to Democrat control in 2018 —
and left-wing mail-in voting scams, and the picture is clear: Even if Trump
wins, the chances of him having two simpatico Houses are slim. And if Trump
triumphs but the Democrats hold the House and seize the Senate, there’s a good
chance he’ll be deposed.
Really, though, focusing on this, the micro, is to not see the
forest for the trees. An excellent high-profile commentator said a while back
that this all (the current unrest, intensifying cancel culture, etc.) seemed to
happen so suddenly. But only the spark, the George Floyd situation, and the
fire were sudden, and something else could have triggered the blaze as well.
The kindling, however, and the many-layered sea of morally dead and
intellectually dry wood had long been burgeoning.
And the spark only catalyzed the firestorm because we’d
reached a point of critical mass.
This is why what we began
talking about in the ‘80s, political correctness, has metastasized into “cancel
culture.” It’s why two people in two recent days — one a cop, the other an
acquaintance — told me what’s plain: They, and everyone else, are afraid to
speak their minds, fearing career and reputational destruction. It’s why social
media censorship is intensifying by the month. An iron muzzle has descended
upon America, and what can’t be spoken against can’t be effectively
combated.
As I warned
in 2012, there no longer is a culture war. “What is occurring now is
a pacification effort.” Its progress is why corporate America, including the now-absorbed
Chick-fil-A and NASCAR, has turned decidedly to the dark side (shifted
“left”). It’s why prominent people, including Republicans such as Indiana
senator Mike
Braun, are bowing before terrorist group Black Lives Matter. It’s why mobs
are enabled and good people hobbled for defending themselves from the mobs. It’s why we’re seeing a complete cultural
collapse — portending a political collapse.
This is partially due to a new “woke” generation having entered
the corporate sphere and others of influence. But what did you expect? The apocryphal
saying (no, it’s not Lincoln’s) informs, “The philosophy of the school room in one generation will
be the philosophy of government in the next.” Did you really think the Left
could completely control academia for generations and that, somehow, it all
would “stay in college”?
Leftists have also controlled entertainment, which could even be
more significant. A (perhaps
loose) paraphrase of ancient Greek philosopher Plato warns, “When modes
of music change, the fundamental laws of the state
change with them.”
Now, though, we have television
and the Internet, whose
effects I’ve examined,
which dwarf music’s influence. Then there’s the aforementioned media
(conventional and social). This culture-shaping media/academia/entertainment
triad has long been leftist-controlled, the result of the long Gramscian “march
through the institutions,” the rotten fruits of all our squandered
yesterdays.
Being a culture-shaper also ultimately means, again, being a
politics-shaper (and civilization-shaper), and this brings us to conservative
rationalization. Even if we could somehow seize control of
the media/academia/entertainment axis, sorry, it takes generations to thus
reshape society, and the time for that was 60 years ago. That ship has sailed
(and sunk).
Then there’s our 1965-born
immigration policy, which, I’ve
estimated, gives Democrats 300,000 new voters yearly, three
million a decade. And when the Democrats assume full control, they’ll
legalize the illegal aliens among us and open the floodgates further (goodbye,
wall), giving themselves perhaps tens of millions of new voters in short order.
So Democrat presidential sock puppet Joe Biden, echoing the man
whose name he couldn’t recall a while back (because echoes are all he has left),
not long ago said we
had to “fundamentally” change America. But that fundamental change has already occurred. Does the 2020 U.S.
even remotely resemble its few-generations-back former self?
So the question isn’t what’s coming, but this: Will you be
ready? When leftists take
full political control federally, they’ll mercilessly impose their agenda as
they always do. If you have no idea what that agenda is, you’re
likely not reading this. But do know that it will be effected no-holds-barred.
For not only is there the critical-mass factor, but Machiavellian
leftists have convinced their useful idiots, projecting all the way, that
conservatives constitute a hateful, “racist,” fascistic, White Supremacist™
threat to civilization. They thus have an ideal pretext for iron-fistedly
crushing opponents. When “Nazis” threaten your civilization, after all, you’re
faced with desperate times requiring desperate measures, right, comrade?
So how do we proceed? This isn’t a defeatist screed. I’m not
saying keep a cyanide capsule handy. But knowing tomorrow’s strategy requires knowing tomorrow’s
battlefield. So what can be
done when, after this election or the next, the federal government becomes a
complete leftist Leviathan wholly unmoored from constitutional constraints?
I’ve long
advocated nullification — meaning, in this case, the ignoring of
unconstitutional federal and judicial dictates — something Thomas Jefferson
called the “rightful remedy” for all federal overreach. This should have been embraced long ago
(e.g., in response to the Obergefell opinion), but will
become more conservative states’ only recourse in the not-too-distant future.
Note, too, that we’d just be doing what leftists do with their “sanctuary”
cities and their defiance of federal drug laws.
In this vein, you can’t win a contest being a “connedservative” who insists
on fighting by Queensberry rules while your adversary operates no-holds-barred.
Remember that, more and more,
we’re living in post-constitutional and post-rule-of-law America.
We’re now increasingly
subject to the rule of men and, in the coming conflict, it’s only a matter of
which men will win.
America is irremediably divided — if a marriage, she would’ve
dissolved long ago — and the above resistance would, of course, make that
division more official. This brings me to what I believe will be our fate.
After having my ‘80s insights, I concluded that we’d just continue
descending into autocracy, as burgeoning laws, regulations and mandates
gradually extinguished freedom, placing us in the iron grip of a central
government Behemoth. But I long ago changed that view: I now believe our country will dissolve, as the
USSR did before us.
Assuming this happens, the
question is: Will at least one emerging land be a new shining city on a hill?
That’s up to us.
And we’d better be ready for things to come, now — because
it’s later than you think, and inside-the-box thinking won’t cut it in an
outside-the-box future.
Contact Selwyn
Duke, follow him on Gab or Parler (preferably)
or Twitter,
or log on to SelwynDuke.com.
