Max Morton asked that question on Memorial Day. Bold, underlined text is my emphasis.
America today is run by someone, we’re not really sure who, and every part of its culture and history is being deconstructed.
The Constitution is not even a speed bump to a new class of oligarchs and tyrants who are in the process of “reimagining” America as a giant Eveready battery to power their globalist business interests. Clearly half the country no longer believes in ideals like individual liberty, freedom, free speech, live-and-let-live, the Golden Rule, or tolerance.
What happened? If I could go back in time and talk to my dead friends and comrades who fell in service to America, what would they say? Would they still have volunteered? Would they still have put their lives on the line for this? Because this is pretty much nothing like the way of life I know they signed up to defend. This is an abomination. This is something I expect they would fight against.
Zombie America
To paraphrase my colleague Angelo Codevilla, what’s happening now in America is not a perversion or aberration, it’s an assertion of power. What we are seeing is the transformation of America from a free and sovereign nation accountable to the citizens, to a vassal state coalition of oligarchs and rogue national security bureaucrats sympathetic to, if not outright supportive of, China’s global hegemony. Who is really on top in this relationship has yet to be determined. Is it the bureaucrats in service to the oligarchs, or is it the oligarchs backing a rogue bureaucracy? Either way, in the words of the late, great George Carlin, “It’s a big club and you ain’t in it.”
. . .
This is truly frightening and raises the question of who is staffing and running our national security apparatus? In fact, who is running our country? Has America become a zombie nation? One without principles, morals, a guiding philosophy, or cultural identity? Present-day America seems to be mindlessly destroying everything in its path, whether through horrid foreign policy decisions, antagonistic and divisive domestic policies, or tyrannical governance. Like a Hollywood movie zombie, it is rapidly becoming unrecognizable from its former living self.
Clear and Present Danger
The current regime likes to talk about the domestic extremist danger to “our democracy.” What they really mean is that traditional Americans are a threat to their transformation of America away from a sovereign nation-state to some form of authoritarian oligarchy.
Too many Americans fail to understand the very real threat to their lives, liberty, and pursuit of happiness posed by a regime that holds this belief. Unfortunately, Americans seem to be waiting for a white knight or some divine miracle to roll back the regime’s ongoing transformation of America. The truth is, that old America, the one you grew up in, the one you think of as normal, doesn’t exist anymore. It’s gone, and it isn’t coming back.
Whether the current regime is backed by an oligarchy-supported deep state bureaucracy, or a deep state bureaucracy supported by China-sympathetic oligarchs, the clear and present danger to every traditional American is centered in Washington, D.C.
We cannot be free if our elected leaders are under the influence of China. And we cannot be free if we must live by the leave of a rogue national security establishment. If Americans want their liberty, they will have to rid themselves of the ruling elite’s swamp—as Donald Trump sadly discovered too late, there is no coexisting with it.
There is still a large part of America that wants to live in a republic and that wants the return of their natural God-given rights enshrined in the Constitution. But there is also a large part of America that no longer believes in the ideals of the republic and are intolerant of anyone who thinks differently.
One faction must bend the other to their will by force, or separate and each go their own way. We are at the point in this great experiment of liberty and self-governance that was America where we must begin the separation between those two factions. They cannot coexist in peace and it is folly to think one side will be able to impose its will on the other.
On this Memorial Day, I will be thinking of my friends and comrades who made the ultimate sacrifice, and I’m not afraid to say that some of those memories will be difficult. But I know that their beliefs and the way of life that motivated them to serve as warriors still exists. It exists in every defiant American who refuses to bend the knee to the tyrant. It exists in every American who still believes in liberty, freedom, and equal justice under law. It exists in those who yearn for the self-determination of a republic. I think that’s worth fighting for, and I think there are others out there across America who believe the same.
It is time to stop trying to debate our country back into unity. Instead, it’s time to look forward, to make a place where we can again live free, speak freely, worship freely, and live out our lives in the manner we choose. It is time to acknowledge the truth and learn to live with it, as difficult as that may be, and to move on. It is time to understand, and say out loud, the republic is dead; Long live the republic!
There’s more at the link.
My perspective is a little different, and perhaps a little clearer, than most Americans’. You see, I came here in the mid-1990’s, and my first contact with America was at that stage of its development. After 9/11, I saw the wholesale destruction of civil liberties as the “security state” took over many aspects of government, and I was deeply troubled by it. I was “fresh enough” to constitutional rights and civil liberties that I was very aware of how quickly and easily they were overruled. Since President Obama’s administration, I’ve watched unelected bureaucrats and political cronies systematically dismantle many of the things I found most attractive and valuable in America, replacing them with partisan political structures that George Washington and the Founding Fathers would probably have gone to war all over again to prevent.
I therefore agree with Mr. Morton that the American Republic I knew in the mid-90’s is effectively dead. Those who’ve been here much longer than I may not have been fully aware of its dying. The “boiling frog” syndrome has doubtless had its effect.
I hope and pray that our constitutional republic can be saved . . . but I have to admit, I doubt it. The divisions between Left and Right have become so strong, so overwhelming, that there’s virtually no possibility of compromise any longer. Also, it’s ridiculous to talk about fighting to resolve the issue. With tens of millions on each side, we can’t kill or threaten our way out of this. I pointed that out in connection with the Paris terror attacks of 2015, and the argument is equally valid here. I said then, and I still say now, “We cannot kill our way out of the dilemma of being human, with all the tragedy that entails.”
Perhaps the only way forward is to divide our present nation into two (or even more) parts. That may be the only way to avoid another bloody civil war. Unfortunately, that won’t be acceptable to the oligarchy currently running things in Washington, because it would dilute and diminish their power. Therefore, I expect bloodshed, no matter what happens.
Peter
With tens of millions on each side, we can't kill or threaten our way out of this.
So rebellions to establish liberty (“killing our way out”) aren’t possible. I guess that was an 18th century thing. Bravo, Founding Fathers, the last people who could rebel to secure their freedom.
Yes, 2020 laid to rest any argument that we still have even a pretense of a republic. It is an oligarchy now. Full stop.
That said, i believe the 2020 election demonstrated just as clearly that most Americans are in fact patriots who care deeply about America and support the idea of liberty and traditional Constitutional values. To that end we saw more people come out and vote for Trump than ever before, the most diverse and broadest section of voters ever. It was a landslide, no doubt about it. And it required the Oligarchs to use every last dirty trick, extortion, bribe, hacking, and even murder to eke out the narrowest of vote totals in just a handful of precincts. Think about that. In 2020 the American people, all over the nation, overwhelmingly supported Trump's views against the Democrat lies. They weren't fooled. The propaganda didn't work.
The pitfall that Morton and others fall into is believing the propaganda of the Oligarchy that half or almost half of the country is on their side. That's a lie. In truth, the Oligarchy is necessarily a small number vs patriots. The problem is and has always been throughout history that even a small number of evil people can subvert a nation and convince a large number of a lie.
Are we in serious shit? Yes. The Oligarchy and its foreign backers have a tenacious hold on federal government, courts, media, education, tech, and big corporations.
But.
It is a relatively thin layer. It can be torn away by we the people. It may require military assistance at some point. But we will find that if Americans will finally draw a line and push back, the Oligarchy will crumble faster than we imagine. In the meantime don't be gulled into believing their fake poll numbers, their propaganda designed to convince you that they are the majority and inevitable victors. 2016 showed we can win. 2020 showed just how close we came to winning again even against their massive stealing. The people are there. We aren't giving up.
The United States of America- born July 4th 1776, died January 20th 2021.
They killed the country, and returned us to a kingdom (or oligarchy) if you will, but the never killed the IDEA that we can govern ourselves without kings, royalty, despots, tyrants, czars, and caesars. One of these days, and it won't be long, may patriots rise up and hoist the black flag and commence to slitting throats.
We have years left to go before this gets intolerable and the country either balkanizes, has a civil war or falls to a dictator. There's a lot of ruin in a nation as rich as the USA, and our elites are happily looting away.
This is why the elite want more turd world people because they are too stupid to grasp Anglo-Saxon concepts that founded this country. It's bad enough there are way too many white leftards who worse than they are in that regard.
I get the idea that you want to avoid awful consequences , who doesn't but we actually can kill a way out of the issues we face.
If you will forgive a Heinlein quote
Violence, naked force, has settled more issues in history than has any other factor, and the contrary opinion is wishful thinking at its worst. Nations and peoples who forget this basic truth have always paid for it with their lives and freedoms.
Now as to threaten, no probably not. The Right is all bluff and brag anyway and are too atomized and more importantly to terrified of responsibility to organize on a large scale.
The Left is already to some degree in charge but they aren't very good at high order so they'll slowly fail. They can do genocide though and if they kill enough of the Right they win.
Since this is on a fundamental level a religious war , we'll get an apocalyptic modern 30 years war with added race hate. Assuming China doesn't just nuke or use germ warfare of course.
The US as configured today might not survive but a new nation or nations could be formed and which no part of that nation differs in fundamentals by more than 10% . This works.
Personally I think we'll just collapse kind of like the USSR anyway. A nation in which no one wants to marry, have children and that can't even get immigrants to have kids is doomed. Secularism is a mouse utopia and an end game.
Eventually the super religious people will be most of the population and the US will be very moral, highly religious, highly fertile all at the genetic level since political and religious tendencies are highly heritable.
It will also be highly White and Amish too.
This will happen just in time for the tech and ecology collapse and the rapid increase in infant mortality and early childhood death.
Not a pleasant scenario and probably on a shockingly short time frame but time wounds all heels.
There are two groups of people who will ruin this country, because they refuse to bear allegiance to the America that is and can be. The first group is those who will only bear an allegiance to an America that never was. The second group those who will only bear allegiance to an America that will never be, at least not to their satisfaction.
The first group is quite well-represented here. (Our host is not among them.)
Some of us here are probably familiar with the name Terrence Popp. For those who aren't, he was a Ranger/Green Beret who came home from one of several tours of duty to find that his wife was divorcing him, and that she'd had his dog put down just for the hell of it. Of course, the courts took her side like they usually do.
I'm glad I never joined the military.
You have no choice about "killing your way" out of Clown World.
The other side fully intends to kill you into it, if necessary. They're not even shy about telling you, out loud, and in print, publicly. Brighter types recognize such behavior as a "clue".
You can resolve to taste bad when they throw you to the lions, are you can gear up to start killing the zookeepers and ringmasters.
You're not going to carve out an enclave of freedom. Ask South Vietnam how that worked out. Run it by Israel. Have a chat with freedom loving Cubans. Let me know how it went in Poland, Czechoslovakia, or Hungary. Consult the Chinese in Taiwan about odds on that.
You have no Mason-Dixon line to retreat behind. You don't have one single 100% red county, anywhere, let alone a full state. Nor would such an option even be tolerated, for so much as an instant.
This is going to be street to street, house to house, floor to floor, and room to room. Period. You cannot gainsay your way out of what's coming, and you can't gaslight those who tell you what's coming. Reality has an annoying habit of kicking down the door, and grabbing you by the throat, long past the time you should have heard it coming up the street.
There's nowhere left to run, and no other way out of this unless the other side all commits mass seppuku, and/or turns themselves in for delusional criminal psychosis and sociopathy.
Wish for the latter unlikelihood in one hand, and crap in the other one, and tell us which one fills up first.
I would counsel sharpening your hatchet, and loading magazines.
"Easy" went by in the rear view mirror about 50 years ago.
The choice now is between bloody conflict, or putting the noose around your own neck and kicking off from the chair, and hoping to dance your way into heaven.
When last I looked, suicide was considered a mortal sin, but a just war was considered an eminently forgivable necessity.
Life guarantees sadness.
You want sunny days and happiness, you're going to have to fight your way there.
Best stop daydreaming for miraculous last-second salvation, and start planning for bitter life-or-death strife.
https://i.imgur.com/SpeixYf.png