A little over a year ago I wrote a piece entitled “The Republic is Dead.” I was perhaps a bit restrained, not wanting to sound hysterical and hoping to be read and not too quickly dismissed. Of course, I was not alone in that prognosis. My expression of dismay was simply my own catharsis following the 2020 election. I wanted to clear the decks, so to speak, and stop shoveling the same evidence over and over in the hope of finding some sign. Irrespective of the great Ronald Reagan, there was no pony in there beneath the manure. But still, the obvious is not all that enlightening.
Most of those capable of seeing the danger of the authoritarian state still cling to that hope. They want to turn the “conservative” movement away from compromise with the Left. They want to get rid of the Mitch McConnell “uni-party” faction that runs the Republican Party. They want to disown the neocons and the RINOs. How they propose to do this is anybody’s guess. The entrenched hierarchy of the Republican Party has been abusing the word conservative for many years. To most minds, they own it now. That’s what happens when words don’t matter.
Nigel Farage, in Britain, has made this sort of realization. I suspect he had known it for years, since founding Brexit, but did his best to stay within the folds of traditional British politics by allowing the Conservatives to adopt that policy to leverage what was still a minority idea. His breaking point came when new prime minister, Liz Truss, proved not to be as full-blown globalist as the party elders wanted, and she was summarily dismissed. Farage had established the Reform Party as a successor to Brexit with a wider purview in the hope of nudging the aging Conservative Party to the right. Raising its skirts in panic as if there was a rat in the room, the Conservatives have instead lurched to the Left under the globalist leadership of Rishi Sunak. You can follow the money there.
The British comparison is worthwhile. The globalists took down President Trump because he was a threat to their ambitions. They have undermined every American conservative effort to stop the progressive agenda from Pennsylvania to Arizona. Donald Trump cannot manage a comeback if the voting is rigged. Wishful thinking will not make it happen. The door-to-door efforts of tens of thousands of conservatives in the last election could not overcome the ballot dumps.
In addition, the template has been scored too deeply by the corruption of national law enforcement. The FBI was not alone in its involvement in the coup against Trump. The CIA and others were up to their elbows in it. And as we are instructed yet again by recent revelation, the history of those agencies has been a cesspool at least since the elimination of another president 60 years ago. Mainstream media will read the script they are handed. Most disheartening, the inertia of half the population will not be overcome by the efforts of patriots who have been labeled nuts by both the bespoke media and the Republican establishment.
Despite this nexus of both evil and corruption, the Ray Epps types promoting violence must be ignored. The January 6 incident is ample proof. At best they are a means for the authorities to locate those who must be controlled. At worst, when the shouting match becomes a melee, they will be directing fire. Any plan to overcome the uniparty and the imperial state must be creative, i.e., constructive, and farsighted.
No matter the emotional need to break the system, for both purgation and renewal, this is the time to think, reconsider, and confirm. The revolution of our forefathers has been digitized, in real time. If you cannot do what you want to do in the open, don’t bother—unless sadomasochism is your thing.
The only course of action at this point must be selfless, in the best Christian tradition. What happens next will not be accomplished in your lifetime—definitely not mine. Education is good. But hands-on care is better. Work at foundations and sustenance. The enemy has more limitations on what they can do than you might realize. Everything they do will fail in the short-term, even when it is functionally possible, because they will not have the competent human beings necessary to do the work.
I am again sustained by our own history, and the inimitable character of William Lloyd Garrison in his fight against slavery and for women’s rights. “I am in earnest. I will not equivocate. I will not excuse. I will not retreat a single inch, and I will be heard!” Living your life in public and private the way you know it should be lived is the only course. Don’t excuse your mistakes—correct them. It will be persuasive. Don’t live in fear. Don’t lose your temper—well, not often. Yelling doesn’t persuade, no matter how good it feels. Stand for what is right and keep standing, as you would have your children stand.
Likely now is the time to start a new political party, with stated principles not unlike the Declaration of Independence, and constructed carefully in ways that will avoid the defects of the past. It too will not be perfect but we should make it perfectible. Make it dependent on the individuals it serves and beholden to the nation but no other political power. Set it on its course—perhaps only a toy boat on a pond that can teach us how to sail against the wind—but more than just a metaphor of a better future.