One of the things that feels strange lately to me is that I’m only really writing one post a week. Mind, it’s a good thing, I was burning out till first Audrtre and then Jessica (God love ’em) rescued me. In truth, I don’t read quite as much either, and my viewpoint tends to be a little longer, which is where I’m at my best. But not writing a book every week does feel strange. But you all benefit from it.
One of the things that were written about this week, from all over the right is essentially “Now what??? Where is America going?” It’s a fraught question, so let’s look at some options.
In American Thinker, Frank Friday thinks we and Canada ought to trade some territory.
Let’s take the blue parts of America along the East and West Coast and put them in Canada. I mean, it’s so obvious, so simple — Canada already is what American liberals have always wanted. Complete government-run health care; gun control; a make-believe military; high taxes; and impossibly snooty, elitist politicians. Even Barack Obama, when he sees the effortless way Justin Trudeau can lift an eyebrow, or stick his nose in the air, just melts with envy. We’ll call this new country Canada-America to start with, Can-America for short.
Then, for red America, we will add the Prairie Provinces of Canada, the Yukon, and all of British Columbia except the southwest corner. This is the part of Canada that talks like Sarah Palin; owns all the guns, such as there are; and has no problem with great big machines strip-mining the earth to get all the good stuff, like the Alberta Tar Sands or Tony Beets’s gold-mining dredge. We’ll call this amalgamation Big America.
That’s far more elegant than simple secession and likely would make a lot of people on both sides of the present border happy. New England threatened this once before of course, during the War of 1812. In short, I like this idea, but since it would reduce the coasts to depending on a foreign power – Red State America, for their very sustenance (as in fact, they do now) It’s probably not very likely.
But Robert Lopez, writing in American Greatness seems to think America will split, as well. His scenario is more history-based, which can be useful but should never be carried too far into the details.
The Supreme Court seems to have made peace with its own irrelevance vis-à-vis the irremediable schism between two halves of the country. The Texas-led half is not, despite some people’s surface reading, a resurrection of the confederacy. Territorially the states that joined Texas’s case form a column reaching from the Mexican to the Canadian border, including the northernmost state, Alaska, and Indiana. Georgia and North Carolina, obviously, are not aligned with Texas anymore, while several northern states like Ohio are moving toward alignment with the red camp.
In cultural terms, the California-led states have reversed their historic position on civil rights and now oppose the fundamental purpose of the Fourteenth Amendment and equal protection under the law (which I review in some detail here.) In their successful pleading to the Supreme Court, they rejected the notion that outside forces can intervene in a state’s voting or judicial process, thereby resurrecting the arguments from former confederate states about their right to block African Americans from suffrage through practices like a poll tax, literacy test, or KKK-style voter intimidation.
“But the courts said so!” is a cold argument to raise given the history of Dred Scott, Plessy v. Ferguson, and Korematsu v. United States.
So much of the way we look at ourselves has been formed by the history of the Roman Republic, maybe he has a point when he says that the US will split much as the Roman Empire did, with the blue states playing Rome with its multiple sackings while the red states (including the leadership of Texas) continue for maybe a thousand years as Constantinople did. It’s an interesting thesis, in any case.
Then there is Steven Hayward at PowerLine who posits that Trump is (whatever happens now) the most consequential one-term president since Lincoln. He makes the point that Trump has led a realignment that may be as great as that led by FDR who took four terms to accomplish what Trump has in one. I agree with him.
In two posts, The Adaptive Curmudgeon summarizes his (and my) view from the trenches, in the first, published just before SCOTUS ran and hid in their bunker, he said this:
[…] Resignation has not been the feel of the world. The press is screaming at me until every intellectual circuit is muttering “we’re doomed” but my soul senses otherwise. I know “doomed”. This ‘aint it. Doomed is a gutless leader facing a wise and implacable foe doing incremental measured misdeeds. We have a guy who’s never backed down from a fight facing a stupid, overconfident, and power drunk group that just plain isn’t up to the task of coup. Yeah, I said it. It’s a coup. They’re chumps for initiating it. Sloppy, uncontrolled, incapable of recognizing a time to retreat, domestic (and foreign?) enemies have acted like toddlers with a machine gun. Our would be oppressors are dangerous, but they’re losers and idiots.
Yup, that’s what I saw as well, and to a point still do. In the second just a day or so ago he says this:
Texas offered an “all in” argument but the SCOTUS took a powder. Fuck them. Texas wasn’t the only game in town. Ironically, it was the argument least likely to publicize the cheat. Meanwhile, each “contested State” has one or more independent legal actions. They’re still ongoing.
I like this movie. I’m not a “sprint to the finish” kind of guy. I like to win with grinding certainty. Slow and steady, hard to refute, documenting every step of the way. Legal action in every State is doing what I want; carefully establishing facts.
So do I, the legal equivalent of Grant’s Overland Campaign. grind them up till they’re destroyed, and about that time Sherman will come along and kick them in the ass. It’s a decisive war-winning strategy.
At The American Spectator, Lou Aguilar reminds us of something else: Real Men voted for Trump. He writes:
A new poll from the Survey Center on American Life found that self-reported “masculine men” overwhelmingly supported President Trump in the last election, 55 percent to 35 percent (“less masculine” men went for Biden 58 percent to 40 percent). Yet even without the alpha dog in the White House, these masculine men will battle the Swamp. That’s because tough guys will do what they always do: usurp tyranny and unreality, beginning with the liberal dream of a Rainbow Coalition. The greatest obstacle to a permanent majority of minorities is male bonding, which partly explains the record high non-white turnout for Trump. In the same poll, 71 percent of black men and 70 percent of Hispanic men (a group that includes me) identify as “completely masculine.” Pitiably, only 54 percent of white men do — too many having buckled under their racial and gender shaming by liberals.
And that is what makes red states red, in my experience, the men (and women too) here are people who actually do things, make things, fix things, and above all live in the real world. We simply know that anyone who says there’s an easy way is full of bullshit, and not fit to lead a horse to water. He also reminds us of the cycle that Spencer Klavan summarized for us.
Weak men make bad times.
Bad times make strong men.
Strong men make good times.
Good times make weak men.
He says we are someplace between the first and second cycles, I think he’s right.
That’s the major takeaway today, the corollary is from our history.
Hold the Line and keep your powder dry.
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