An old Libertarian axiom dictates that government crackdowns on undesirable transactions don’t destroy those markets, they just create black markets. The Roaring 20s speakeasy was a classic example that emerged in response to Prohibition. Today in the Whimpering 20s, illegal commerce is seeing a resurgence as the continued lockdowns are making ordinary activities illegal. This is a digital age, so much like meetings have been replaced by Zoom calls, live streams have replaced backroom dive bars as the new speakeasies.
This is why Republicans’ latest effort to shame their base into voting for them rings hollow. We’re supposed to envision a two-seat GOP Senate majority as Liberty Prime defending America from Chinese communism. In reality, Big Tech has been steadily imposing a social credit system on us while Republicans do nothing.
Not exactly nothing. When the people elected the first President in decades who made countering China’s economic warfare a priority, the GOP worked tirelessly to thwart his mandate. Trump will leave office with none of his agenda passed into law, despite having House and Senate majorities for two years and a Senate majority for four.
People who are red-pilled on the ruling monoparty like to invoke the Harlem Globetrotters vs Washington Generals meme to call out the GOP as controlled opposition. Everybody knows the Generals get paid to take a dive. What many overlook is that they’re paid to make it look good. When Republicans saw their numbers falling in Georgia, they hastily mobilized an eleventh-hour token defense of Trump they knew would fail.
Therein lies the real fruit of the Trump administration. Outsiders like Pat Buchanan and Ross Perot had long issued wake-up calls about the bi-factional elite. They even managed to attract serious followings and influence elections, but exactly what would happen if an outside candidate won remained an open question. Trump gave us the answer and opened millions of people’s eyes.
The red pill that Trump dispensed at great personal cost is final and indisputable proof that the game is rigged. The Republican Party does not work for the ordinary people it pretends to represent. Just recently, McConnell & Co. prostrated themselves before Puppet Pal Joe on national television.
Our elites may not be the brightest crayons in the box, but they possess a certain unctuous cunning. They know that public outrage over their betrayal of Trump has an expiration date, thanks to the fruit fly brain news cycle. Hence their immediate pivot to the earth-shaking importance of the Georgia runoff and the Yellow Scare spook stories.
Traitorous Republicans are counting on the media memory-holing Trump so they can lull us back into the sheepfold. Reptiles like McConnell, Perdue, and Loeffler are sure they’ve got it made. With Orange Man gone, they can go back to promising the rubes that they’ll make infanticide inconvenient while they’re actually busy doubling Apple’s net worth again.
In a democracy, even a sham democracy like ours, the people have one bit of leverage over our rulers. Elected officials derive their authority from the people’s vote. Denying them that fig leaf places their claim to legitimacy on thin ice.
One hope of a peaceful resolution to this farce remains. The voters who reelected Trump, only to see their will spurned by the ruling class, must primary every national Republican who failed to defend the President. Any GOP turncoat who can’t be primaried out must be defeated in the general in 2022. Unless we inflict consequences upon this party of traitors, they will have no incentive to stop betraying us.
For a discussion of these and many other engaging topics, watch my recent live stream appearance hosted by leading Hispanic author Jon Del Arroz:
Wasn't on the stream or chat, but the bishops here in Minnesota _did_ push back on the government restrictions at several points.
Good to hear.
What's notable is that Walz backed down almost immediately at the first sign of resistance. I think it's pretty notable that he didn't even try to restrict churches further in the current "4 week pause." Before the bishops actually pushed back the plan was to have attendance in churches restricted to 10 people for pretty much the entirety of the "dial back" so it's clear that he doesn't value worship. And it's also clear that he doesn't care how many people are mad at him, as shown by his gracious decision to allow restaurants to reopen, but only for outdoor dining (in December).
It's too late for a peaceful resolution. As you retweeted recently, the Will of the People has replaced the Divine Right of Kings in the west, which is similar to the Imperial Chinese Mandate of Heaven. It is the philosophical foundation on which the government builds its case for its right to create and enforce laws, prosecute wars, and negotiate treaties (though the original philosophical foundation in the Declaration of Independence included a divine mandate to protect the rights of the common folk). History tells us that when that philosophical foundation is seen as lost by a critical mass of people (we are probably there), the rebellion that will overthrow that government will begin within about 10 years.
St. John Paul the Great warned of much the same thing happening in Evangelium Vitae. He'd also be the first to affirm that divine chastisements can always be mitigated, even if they can't be averted.
Loeffler made noises recently that she's considering an objection to the electoral vote count, so Trump voters' threats to burn down the GOP seem to be getting through. The prudent course in the near term is to keep the heat on the GOP.
Turn up the heat. Turn it up and apply pressure with true desperation, if you really believe civil war is coming. And while you are doing so, read accounts of the major civil wars of the 20th century. Not dry catalogues of tactics or warfare handbooks, but the stories of people who lived through them.
Brian
If I were a governor with a spine, I'd declare the entire Biden cabinet personae non grata in my state, kick out the FBI, refuse any federal money and refuse to enforce any new federal law encroaching on states rights. And no press conferences!
xavier
It is well within the scope of possible to primary every last one of them. The aim is to make it clear that the Right will accept LITERALLY ANYONE before a traitor.
That's the idea.
Voting tactics matter very little if they are allowed to rig the game. If Biden gets sworn in, leftists will learn that lying, stealing, cheating, stonewalling, and rioting to get their way works, even when people show up to vote against them in record numbers. If you think they've been doubling down so far, just you wait.
They have now been shown that even statistical impossibilities will be swallowed by the public wholesale so long as the candidate is MSM-approved, and that proof of cheating will go ignored, even by the legal system.
The strategy of primarying might work for a little while, but from the look of things the left will always present "their guy" in the primaries, and they need no help in the general election. I'm not sure there's a winning strategy here other than praying for a miracle on January 6th.
For all the good Trump achieved, one disservice he did the Right was convincing many that the Left would be defeated in one fell swoop. Rooting out a hostile force that's had decades to become entrenched in the institutions doesn't work like that. It's a slow, gradual process.
Boycotting the GA runoff is just step one. Primarying all the RINOs who forfeited the presidential election is step 2. If some of them still manage to win their primaries, boycotting those national and state elections is step 3.
This is the point where normiecons usually freak out. "But if we boycott the GOP, the Dems will take over and do socialisms!!"
What they never explain is how they expect the same GOP that refused to defund Planned Parenthood, repeal Obamacare, and fund the Wall–not to mention throwing Trump under the bus–will protect them from the Yellow Menace.
The GOP doesn't fight for us because we've kept rewarding them for screwing us over. Making an example of GOPe grifters, to encourage the others, is how we incentivize the rest of the party to actually represent us.
The flagrant Democrat voter fraud objection, while valid, assumes the GOP stays the same. The whole point of ejecting the RINOs is to replace them with officials who will fight for our interests as hard as Dem politicians fight for their agenda.
The 2020 steal was not a fait accompli. State and Congressional republicans could have stopped it at any time in any number of ways. They simply chose not to. Because they thought we'd let it slide and go right back to voting for them. Our job now is to disabuse them of that notion.
Again, real votes are meaningless if they are ratio'd by fake ones. I hope you're right that it's not irreversible, but I have my doubts. If our job before this steal was to vote against the establishment–which we did in record numbers–then how is our new winning strategy more voting? Our job should be more action, such as lobbying for the Convention of States, joining groups like the Oath Keepers, preparing for catastrophe, and bothering our senators until they comply with the wishes of the American people.
We should absolutely threaten to primary them along the way, but I'm afraid that alone won't be the answer like it's been in the past. Politicians don't give their voters the time of day anymore because they know they don't need to win votes. Hell, they don't even have to campaign anymore.
I agree with Nick. There is no ppint in acting like voting matters.
Our next steps are going to Church, getting to know our immediate neighbors, and learning how to keep ourselves safe. We aren't voting our way out of this; if Trump doesn't find some way to stop the steal, it's over.
It is nevertheless necessary to engage with politics. I have seen guys talk about war (not present company) and thought to myself "You won't dirty your hands with politics, but you expect us to believe you'd dirty them with blood?"
No matter what happens, no matter what order it happens in, politics WILL ALWAYS be the primary answer, beyond your own soul. Even war is just the continuation of politics with additional means.
Local politics, certainly. National and state, your vote no longer means anything.
You're reducing a field to a binary.
I don't see a long-term future for the democratic process. What I do see is a viable near-term tactic.
Stuffing the ballot box is not sufficient to steal an election. The other party has to go along. The outrage over the GOP's betrayal of Trump gives us a narrow window to replace the Generals with the Miami Heat.
If that fails, then yes, voting will only give our rulers' tyranny a rubber stamp.
What window though? What makes you think any of the uniparty will be permitted to be voted out?
1) The GA runoff and the 2022 Republican primaries.
2) Recent instances of RINO incumbents getting primaried out by MAGA candidates.
It's a backhanded compliment to the GOP that they don't have the infrastructure or the gall to rig elections as effectively as the Democrats. It's a major vulnerability the GOPe didn't expect their base to exploit. Look how cucks like Crenshaw and Haley are panicking over GA.
These strike me as individual instances they have decided as of now not to rig more so than an exploitable vulnerability.
I am not saying "Give up", full stop, but I am saying "Give up thinking your vote can change things."
Of course, it isn't over. Maybe Trump stops the steal and the fraudsters are all arrested. But if that doesn't happen, and it is a long shot, we're trying to fix problems voting with more voting when we should be focusing all of our attention at lower, local levels.
Bellomy,
Look further down, and further up. The weapons of our warfare are not carnal, but spiritual. We must look down, all the way down, to examine ourselves in the Light of God's Incarnate Truth, whose birth we will celebrate this week. We must look all the way up, through Our Crucified Lord to His Ascension, Kingship, and Return.
I have no idea what follows the mess we are in, but whatever comes, we must turn our faces to God. We must fast and pray, attend public worship, lead prayer and worship in our own households, receive the Sacrament(s), and offer ourselves as living sacrifices. The Lord promised us trials, tribulations, and His own triumph.
Pardon the OT, but John C. Wright's blog is coming up "Account suspended". Can anyone reach John either to let him know or find out what's up? Thanks.
Update: it's back. Strange. I've seen his site down before but not suspended.