Another masterful analysis from Angelo Codevilla

 

Prof. Angelo Codevilla is one of the most insightful, incisive analysts of the political, social and cultural environment in the USA.  We’ve heard from him several times in these pages.  Now he’s written another excellent article, an analysis of the oligarchy that’s taken over our country, and how it’s working to suppress and destroy our freedoms.  Here’s an excerpt.

The American republic was founded in 1776-89 by the people at large, to serve the general interest by mixing the power of sheer numbers with that of states, and with that of a unitary presidency. But over the last century, the increasingly homogeneous set of people who run the republic’s institutions took power out of the hands of the people’s elected representatives pretty much at all levels, and have governed in their own interest rather than in the general population’s. Nobody voted for this, on any level.

On the contrary: the exercise of coercive powers by and for self-selected elites who claim to know better and who validate one another is the very negation of the constitutional republic within which Americans have lived since 1776. It is oligarchy.

In 21st century America, this oligarchy erased the distinction between public and private powers, and replaced it with the distinction between those who are and are not part of the ruling class. The privatization of public power is oligarchy’s essence. Because government is by the ruling class few, and is for that class’s interest, the oligarchs can wield the coercive powers of government without legal limits, as if they were dealing with their own private affairs.

Those who live under oligarchies are not citizens—because oligarchy validates itself, decides for itself, within itself, and because it is committed above all to negating the people’s capacity to rule itself.

Americans struggle to understand what is happening because we still regard ourselves as citizens, and imagine that those who run our republican institutions still respect them to some extent. We see persons whom the ruling class favors committing crimes with impunity, and complain of “a two-tiered justice system.” But this is not mere corruption. We see corporations wielding government powers and complain that power is being franchised to favorites. But these are not mere favorites of the regime. This is the new regime being itself. Such things are not deviations from republican legality. They are the assertion of oligarchic reality. This is oligarchic justice, oligarchic normality. The republic was yesterday. The oligarchy is today.

Conservatives’ congenital mistake is to try conserving something that no longer exists by supporting institutions that now belong to a regime so alien to republican life that it treats attempts at citizenship as crimes against the regime. And so they are. They call today’s American regime “our democracy.” It is “theirs,” all right, but not ours. It is a classic oligarchy.

. . .

Rejection of oligarchy is possible, even easy, if and when large numbers of persons do it together. This goes for ostensibly private corporations as well as for formerly republican institutions now in the oligarchs’ hands. The moment that millions of Americans, whether led by actual state governors in league with one another or by prospective presidents, recognize that Twitter and Facebook are enemy institutions, their power ends. The moment that millions are led to boycott Costco, or Pfizer, their officers are fired. The moment that these millions, so led, refuse the legitimacy of anything coming from Washington, its power ends.

. . .

Nor, in 2021, can anybody stop the governors and legislatures of any number of states from leading their peoples in settling what is and is not acceptable to them, how they shall and shall not live—that is, nobody can stop them as they decide to govern themselves.

The American people, divided as they are, cannot purge the oligarchs from what had been republican institutions. But those so minded have full power to defend themselves from them and to leave them to their own devices.

There’s more at the link.

I see only one flaw in Prof. Codevilla’s analysis, and that is that the oligarchs who have now taken control of the USA won’t allow us to ignore them.  As Daniel Webster warned us:

Good intentions will always be pleaded for every assumption of authority. It is hardly too strong to say that the Constitution was made to guard the people against the dangers of good intentions. There are men in all ages who mean to govern well, but they mean to govern. They promise to be good masters, but they mean to be masters.

Our current rulers mean to rule.  They won’t leave us alone;  they won’t allow us to ignore them.  They intend to force us to obey, if necessary by weaponizing the instruments of the State against us (such as the IRS auditing the taxes of anyone who threatens the system).  They’ve already corrupted that and many other agencies of the federal government (including law enforcement agencies) to the point that they’re no longer trustworthy.

How do we stop them?  Well, I know one way – to stop the agents of our rulers, if necessary forcibly, from doing their jobs – but that leads inexorably to actual civil war.  The cure might be worse than the disease.  We’re going to have to figure out ways to accomplish this without going that far, if that’s still possible.  One remedy might be for State governments to pass laws inhibiting or prohibiting federal officers and staff from performing their functions within their boundaries.  There are (and will be more) federal laws restricting this, but it’s one thing to make such laws, and another to enforce them.  It would lead to legislative conflict, and almost certainly judicial as well, but I hope it would stop short of bloodshed.

If that doesn’t work . . . well, there’s probably only one way.  As the Intrepid Reporter noted yesterday (although I still hope he’s wrong):

Too many people still huffing the Copeium and Hopeium

“The Recounts! The Recounts!”

So. ****ing. what?

They already openly and with great satisfaction successfully stole the election.

Do you -really think- that they’re going to go “Oh, our bad!” pack up and leave in any way shape or form?  **** no they ain’t.  It’s like that Saudi Air Force pilot I wrote about back in the day.  Dude panicked, and death gripped the plane into a death dive towards the ground… the American instructor tried to get control, and ended up pulling his .45 and putting it to Abdul’s head and telling him he was gonna waste him if he didn’t let go of the controls. The ****ing unelected bureaucrats are firmly running the show now… They’re in the pilot’s seat, and ain’t no getting them out unless the guy in the other seat takes out his .45, and aces their brains alllll over the other side of the cockpit.

Eventually, we’re going to have to be that guy

The -only- hope I have is that something, somewhere will provide the motivation for either the Boomers to come out of their self-induced ****ing coma and start some ****, OR that the Leviathan, in running roughshod over the grass, tramples the ‘wrong grass’ so to speak.  The Boomers are still comfortable, as they have all their gains and cash… their nice comfortable retirements in Walled Villages of like-minded/aged fellow self-centered greedheads.  It’s if -they- start getting totally ****ed over that shit’ll start happening… maybe.  The entirety of current Politics has been for the past 30 years aimed at keeping the giant Boomer demographic fat, dumb, disconnected and happy so as to not cause issues.  In fact it’s the pre-Boomers like the 80 year old Pelosi who know and pander to that particular base that keeps them in their $27000 fridges and $15 a pint ice-cream while X’ers and Millennials are forced to scrape by on the scraps.

. . .

Part of that is also, we X’ers woke the **** up sometime around the mid 90’s and realized it was all a con… that it was a hustle that we weren’t allowed to participate in.  That it was a sham… a con.. that the ‘Murican Dream was horse****, so we disconnected, and some of us… we taught our children the same.

. . .

[Admiral James] Stockdale‘s final comment to Collins is telling: ““This is a very important lesson. You must never confuse faith that you will prevail in the end—which you can never afford to lose—with the discipline to confront the most brutal facts of your current reality, whatever they might be.”

We must have faith in the final outcome of Good over Evil

But we must remember that in order to survive, an Individual’s personal “metal” must be tested.

And that test is by fire.

Fire, that if caught unaware, can consume you and your soul.

A brutal new dawn is coming, be ready.

Again, more at the link.

I truly hope that The Intrepid Reporter is wrong . . . but I know I’m hoping against hope.  A couple of months ago, I linked to The Smallest Minority’s masterful article titled “Immanentize the Eschaton!“, which you should certainly read in full if you haven’t already done so.  Truly, there is no voting our way out of this.  I’ve already acknowledged that the current Administration and its cronies know they’re in a fight for their lives.  If they’re turfed out of their illegitimately occupied positions of power (as they should be), they know that they’ll face legal and judicial consequences for stealing last year’s elections.  They won’t take that lightly, and they’ll fight to preserve the power and privileges they’ve illegally stolen.

I think Prof. Codevilla is absolutely right in his analysis, and in his prescription . . . but I think the current powers that be won’t allow us to implement his prescription, out of their own self-interest.

As Daniel Webster warned us, “they mean to govern… they mean to be masters”.  That pretty much shuts down the easy way out of this, and leaves us only the hard way, as The Intrepid Reporter and many others have pointed out.

God forbid that should become necessary . . . but prayer and wishes haven’t worked in similar situations in the past.  Sometimes, loins have to be girded.  Women in every age have sometimes had to emulate their Spartan forebears and tell their sons, “Return with your shield, or on it“.  Sometimes there’s no other way.

Peter