Now What?

Last week, the Governor of South Dakota, Kristi Noem, outlined, in The Federalist, her ideas of the problems that the election highlighted with the Republican Party and conservatism in America generally. If you believe or hope that there is a road back for the United States this is a very good plan, as I would expect from the best Governor in the US. Here’s what I can share of it, do follow the link and read it all.

Our country has changed. We have failed to educate generations of our children about what makes America unique. Few, if any of them, have been taught the history of our decades-long fight to defeat communism. Meanwhile, the left’s indoctrination takes place every day with kids all across America from the time they walk into a school at age 5 to the time they graduate college at 22.

Republicans have not been disciplined enough to do the hard work. The American people need us to fight for them on a daily basis, not just 30 to 60 days before an election.

Our party has some serious work ahead of us. We are going to have to sit down and collectively answer a very simple question: Why does America need Republicans?

The answer to that is very simple: 2020.

Last year, we saw governments all across the country shut down people’s lives. American citizens could not go to church, run their business, or send their children to school.

COVID didn’t crush the economy. Government crushed the economy. And then, just as quickly, government turned around and held itself out as the savior. Frankly, the Treasury Department can’t print money fast enough to keep up with Congress’ Christmas list.

What is so troubling is that by April, we knew that there was a specific vulnerable population that we needed to protect from COVID-19. But we also knew that the vast majority of people would recover from this virus with no serious difficulty. Despite this, very few changed course.

In 2020, despite the virus, if you wanted to riot, loot, and burn buildings down, the government either stood idly by while you did that, or worse, tacitly encouraged the destruction.

Government didn’t punish the violent criminals. But it did everything it could to punish those Americans who simply tried to defend themselves, their families, their livelihoods, and their property.

What we lived in 2020 is the left’s vision for America. […]

The American Dream is possible because of the principles that we Republicans stand for; the same principles that are under vigorous attack by the other side. We believe in certain ideals and institutions, which have served as an inspiration to people all over the world. Those people hold liberty dear in their hearts. That’s why people all across the globe have uprooted their lives to come to America. And it’s why, today, Americans across the country are flocking to South Dakota.

If you think about it, that’s America’s true diversity. It’s a diversity grounded in the pursuit of truth and the virtuous life, where we will be known by the content of our character and our hard work.

We must go into this battle for freedom with our eyes wide open, educated to the tactics the radical left will use, and yet totally pure in our motives. This isn’t about us. It’s about our children and their future. It’s about the example that we set for them. We have one shot to preserve for our children “the last best hope of man on earth.” If we fail, at least they will know that we did all that we could to hold on to it.

GovernorNoem’s vision of America is very similar to mine and to millions of us across the fruited plain. That vision is unarguably under attack from a competing vision mostly from the coasts and including Washington, that owes much more to Lenin, Marx, Mao, Castro, and Maduro than it does to Jefferson, Madison, Franklin, and Washington. Right now we are losing, that doesn’t mean we’ll lose, but if we keep letting the idiotic cowardly GOP run things we’ll be telling our grandchildren what it was like in the United States where Men (and Women) were free. Kurt Schlichter has some things to say in Townhall as well, and he’s far from wrong.

You know they hate you, right? Really and truly, and they want you silenced, disenfranchised, and dead if necessary. That woman the federal cop shot on video in the Capitol, capped for trespassing, was expendable and so are you. Now, one might be accused of “whataboutism” for this next part, but whataboutism is a moral necessity that highlights the lies that form the foundation of our garbage Establishment, and therefore it must be constantly and loudly practiced. What about all those people killed on video whose deaths sparked riots? Now, the initial read on the shooting seems bad, but being the wacky nonconformist rebel I am, I’ll wait until all the facts are in to make a final judgment and just say at present that the shooting looks questionable. But no one will ask the questions. The cop will be cleared and will never, ever be charged, and even if President Biden’s* U.S. Attorney in the forthcoming State of D.C. were to file charges (LOL, sometimes I even make myself laugh), let’s just say I put the chances of a D.C. jury convicting at about O.J. level.

No one

Sauce for the goose=Sauce for the gander

In their right mind wanted this. Once again, my dad was right, “A crowd is like a wild animal; you never know what it’s going to do.” When I saw the size of the crowd Wednesday afternoon, my heart sank. The nerves kicked in. Went to bed late, got up early – more had arrived in D. C. I was happy for the folks that President Trump addressed them and at the same time thought, ‘this is not good’.

But never in a million years did I ever expect to see what we saw this afternoon at the Capitol. It was like a horror movie come true. Churches are sacrosanct. Schools are sacrosanct. All governmental buildings are sacrosanct – or should be. We all know how we reacted to what we saw; how we felt when we saw it. How to equate it? Like a 9/11 we perpetrated on ourselves? I don’t know. Right now I have no words, just inexpressible sadness. Maybe we have, indeed, become a banana republic – that’s the sort of place this sort of thing happens, isn’t it?

How did we get here from where we started? Through one of the toughest summers America has seen in a long time, we – meaning conservatives – managed to keep our cool, keep our baser natures in check, act reasonably and responsibly. And then this happens. We can’t use the poor excuse, “They did it to us, we’re gunna do it to them” or “what did you expect; people are pissed”. We don’t do this. We march, we carry signs, we write or call our elected officials, at every level, to be sure our voice is heard. We write in our blogs or talk in our vlogs. But we don’t break into a government building. We don’t act like buffoons – or baboons! – and sit in the prominent seat in the House of Representatives; that’s kid stuff, that’s like a 13-year-old kid giving the finger to the grouchy neighbor.

What has been done can never now be undone. They have made a bad situation worse. They just gave the left the victory by pulling the same crap the left did all summer. We have seen the enemy and it’s no longer them.

I think we are now one minute before midnight for America.

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From Neo:

I petty much agree with Audre here, I don’t really see violence as being a cure for much of anything, and watching the storming of the Capitol broke my heart.

And yet…

It happened now, and I think it was going to happen if not this week, then next week, or next month, because the grievances were, and are real, starting with election fraud, and the ridiculous response to the Chinese flu, and continuing on to the GOPe ignoring and lying to the base since Eisenhower was president. I know exactly how they felt because I have the same urge. Why?? via Ace of Spades

From Willis Krumholz (@WillKrumholz):

 

Lots of people doing the “oh look at me, those bad Trump supporters” posts now. Today was unacceptable. Absolutely.

But what just happened? The Mayor of DC ordered police to stand down and a handful of idiots entered the Capitol…

Just last night, a violent mob surrounded a Senators wife at home with their newborn baby. They tried to force themselves into the home. In the last four years, Congresspersons were shot at and Rand Paul and Steve Scalise were almost killed.

This year, whole cities were destroyed and cops were targeted and killed.

Today at the Capitol, a woman–unarmed–was shot and killed. Nobody cares, apparently.

If your outrage only flows in one direction, which is even true of many GOP people, you are not the solution.

Why are we drawing the line at office buildings where Congress works as opposed to people’s homes and businesses?

Whole city blocks were destroyed this summer. Anyone who isn’t equally incensed at both is not a patriot.

Also, nobody is going to change anyone�s mind. The “GOP people” blaming Trump have always hated Trump. People who like Trump will point to stuff from this summer.

Maybe the answer is a Conservative/Traditionalist party that actually reflects working people (the base).

I can say with absolute assurance that the current GOP (“yay corporate tax cuts and staying in Afghanistan another 5 years”) does not reflect the base, let alone a good chunk of the country.

That’s true for me, and I’ll bet it’s true for many of you. Do you feel represented by your Senators, your Congressperson, your governor, or state legislators? When you write or email them do you ever get more than a pro forma (often automated) response, thanking you for writing without taking any notice of your views? Yeah, me neither. And I live in one of the reddest of red states, but it doesn’t matter. I could just as well be a Republican in Lori Lightfoot’s Chicago, for all anybody in Lincoln or Washington gives a good goddamn what I think. They’re too busy feathering their own nest to have time for their employers.

That’s the Republicans, the Democrats are worse. They’ll happily stand aside as their stormtroopers burn down whole cities of poor people without a qualm, but boy they looked scared on Wednesday, didn’t they?

For all that there are many credible reports that this was an Antifa/Democrat false flag operation, they suddenly came face-to-face with their employers the taxpayers that make it all possible while sending our kids to die in stupid forever wars.

And now I see that the authoritarian neocons allied as usual with the left-wing want to crack down even harder on dissent. Well, dictators gotta dictate till they’re stopped. These people evidently think a civil war in America is a good thing. I don’t, but I live in the real world, not Washington, and I know damned well it will destroy a republic that has taken 250 years to build.

Wave good-bye to the Republic, it died Wednesday, not in the protest but in the response of the idiot political class to the demands of the people.

Audre was wrong about that, it’s not 11:59, it’s more like 20 minutes after midnight.

Good luck, we’re all on our own now.

Stop the Steal

Two remarkable things happened on January 4th, 2021. Several hours apart, they both deeply affected me. During the day, I saw this video from John Voight

Moved very near to tears; this is my America. All across the country, people we don’t know are feeling the exact same way – this is my America; we take it very personally, we own it. There are people – at best, misguided; at worst, evil – there are people who have no such connection with the land and the history of this country, people who would strip this country of all that she is and all the promise she holds for the purpose of making it a sort of ‘utopia’ that will never exist. America, as she is, IS the utopia. If you don’t believe that, ask someone who immigrated here and found all that they were looking for. This is my America

What else needs to be said?

The second thing that deeply affected me on January 4th was later in the evening, President Trump’s rally for Senators Kelly Loeffler and David Purdue. The phrase “eleventh hour” kept running through my head. People love President Trump because he loves America – he, like us, remembers the America we grew up in; the America we want all our children, grandchildren, great-grandchildren to grow up in. The flag, baseball, and apple pie. We, the America-loving citizens of the United States, are at five minutes to the midnight of America unless the man of the eleventh hour can prevail. I don’t worship Trump; I only worship Jesus. But for right here, right now, President Trump is the only man who can save the United States of America. I pray deeply and earnestly that it is in God’s will for this man to save my country.

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From Neo:

Audre is spot on, for my America, her America, Mr. Voight’s America, Mr. Alverez’s America, and so many more millions of us, the Republic itself is in danger. The picture above is the rally yesterday in Washington, DC. Never in my lifetime, or any American living today have we seen a situation where we simply believe that a Presidential election, has been stolen by the Democrat Party, aided and abetted, by a large part of the Republican Party, by the almost entirely partisan (fake) news media, by the courts, state and federal including the Supreme Court, and by the almost entirety of government employees.

At this point, to us, it feels like the people versus the entire establishment, and in fact, as I write this on Tuesday evening, the Republican Senate candidates in Georgia are trailing (it’s not even close to over, so please God, that may change) but they are hardly really strong candidate for the people either. Like my idiot Senator Ben Sasse, they are what we have come to call RINO’s, but as I decided when I voted for Sasse in the general (but not the primary) a RINO is better than a jackass. But that may be ending, if the Biden illegitimate regime takes power, all bets are off. As Rabbi Dov Fischer wrote in The Spectator Monday, Not This Time…

No matter how the next weeks play out, a new Republican conservative has arisen who will not roll over and play dead for the delight of Democrats and their Left media. Trump did not really create this new populism; rather, he gave voice to it. And now, for the first time in nearly a century, this stronger conservative voice and strength will dominate the Opposition. It may be too loyal and patriotic to be a “Resistance,” but it will be an “Opposition” such that the Democrat-Media-Left has not before seen nor experienced. Roll over and play dead? Not this time, dear Leftists.

We the American people created this Republic covenanted to God alone and dedicated to the freedom of each and every one of us. It will stand as it always has, or we will refer to Thomas Jefferson’s famous words.

Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security.

We did it before against far longer odds, and if needs be, we will do it again. It is our Right, nay it is our DUTY to do so.

Thy will be done.

Basically speaking, 73.8 million prayers were lifted. The realist in me has come, sort of, to a reconciliation that the Biden/Harris ticket won. All that’s left to do is the crying.

It’s especially hard, I think, for Christians who do firmly believe in the power of prayer. How do we ‘measure’ the effectiveness of prayers against actualities not of our choosing? While we may be hurting, I think it’s important to step back and look at things dispassionately.

First of all, America has been moving in this direction for quite some time. We did little to recognize it, let alone stop it. We just went along because, well, we’re busy and who has time to work these things out while juggling kids and work and family issues and the day to day trials and tribulations of the work a day world. Secondly, who could have foreseen the tremendous accomplishments of President Trump when he assumed power four years ago – did any one of us think he’d have such breath-taking success?

The thing to remember, when we scratch our heads and wonder if God has deserted us, is that for God, this is all just one long day. He sees the beginning, the middle, and the end of all things all at one time. He knows and sees what we can never know and see. There is always a reason. There is always the fulfillment of His plan. This turn of events may be a chastening; it may have an outcome, over the next four years, that we simply can’t imagine. But whatever the future holds, He is still in charge and ultimately, His will will be done – on earth, as it is in heaven.

So, as folks say, buck up, buttercup. He’s given us the strength to get through all that we’ve surmounted throughout our lives and we’ve lived through tough times as a country and we will, with His help, get through this as well. Don’t stop praying for our country; don’t stop praying for the President of the United States no matter who he or she may be; don’t stop praying for our governments and the people who man them. He hears us. But always remember, “THY will be done”

Now What, America?

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.

The American Schism

Depending on your knowledge of church history, you may or may not know the term ‘schism’. There have been three in Christendom, and one that is but is not called so. The first is when the Nestorians (including Alexandria and the Copts left after the Council of Chalcedon in 451, the second is when the Eastern Orthodox left after the addition of the filioque in the Creed, the one not really called that is the Reformation, where the Protestant churches left Rome’s sway. The third one is the one that concerns us here, the one sometimes called the Babylonian Captivity. where there was a Pope in Avignon, France and for most of the time there was also one in Rome. None have been good for Christianity.

It was political, as the Papacy was getting too involved in politics for the Pope’s taste, and then after the papacy moved back an overmighty bureaucracy (The College of Cardinals) appointed a second Pope in Avignon. This went on for 69  years.

So what has this to do with 2020 America? This, that schism divided the church rather badly because both sides were hurling thunderbolts, excommunion, interdict, heresy, all those fateful words that made fellow communicants into the other, and not entirely human. And that is where we are. Writing in American Thinker, Steve Deace says:

History may not repeat, but it often rhymes. America is not merely divided, as many of today’s political commentators claim, but it’s in the midst of a Great Schism as the church was in Avignon. Two completely distinct cultures are now simultaneously claiming the same nuts and bolts of the structure of America as their own, but with holistically different reasons and visions for doing so. One side wants to use it to maintain a way of life that was once considered traditional in America. The other desires revolution to undo many of those traditions it views as standing in the way of their reimagining of America.

Unless President Trump’s court challenges to the integrity of the election are successful soon, Joe Biden is going to be sworn in as the next president of the United States on January 20. Given the fact that Biden represents the left’s cultural revolution, on top of the ongoing controversy surrounding his potential election, it’s quite likely that many of the 74 million people who voted for Trump’s re-election would see Biden as an illegitimate president from the get-go. And we’ve already lived through four years of Democrats and their media attempting to de-legitimize the Trump presidency even before it began.

This is the language and behavior of schism.

He’s right, I will not, no I can not, receive as legitimate an election so rife with fraud that it was prima facie stolen from the president. I could not have if it had been this obvious that President Trump had in 2016, even though I agreed with much of what he said, and I certainly can not with Joe Biden, who from reports may have sold his loyalty to the Chicoms and the Ukrainians for money, not to mention to every tinpot globalist, and proposes almost every policy that has been proven to bring about the death of prosperity and the rule of law. Nope, can’t do it. And you know what, there about 70 million Americans who think just like I do.

Obama, you may remember whined that America is ungovernable (he’s not wrong, it’s a feature of a free country, not a bug) but you ain’t seen nothing yet. When people who don’t get involved in politics, get involved in politics, things change.

If Trump is ultimately denied the presidency, he will not drift off into irrelevancy as his detractors hope. Quite the contrary: Losing this way despite massively growing his appeal among voters compared to 2016 will only make Trump stronger in the hearts and minds of his base. He will become a living martyr — something even more powerful than a president in some ways, a symbol of how far the left in America is willing to go to end anything American conservatives view as worthy of conserving: Fake News, Fake Borders, Fake Laws, Fake Genders, Fake Science, Fake Russian Collusion, Fake Pee Tapes, Fake Independent Counsels, Fake Ukrainian Collusion, Fake Social Media, Fake COVID Panic Porn, and now Fake Elections.

The right in America has finally gotten the message the American left has been trying to convey — leftists have no intent of sharing Americana with those who still believe in it. If you cherish normalcy, let alone righteousness, you will be made to care — to the point that nothing remains sacred or agreed upon. Nothing is exempt from the gaslighting — not even a drug that is suddenly claimed to be dangerous after 60 years of being publicly certified as safe.

The American left is altering the deal, and it now stands as this: either you end your way of life voluntarily, or we end it for you. That’s it, take it or leave it.

To lose to these leftists, and this disputed way, will make Trump president in absentia to millions of Americans.

Do read the article, but

Yet yes, all of that and more, the representative constitutional republic is the holy of American holies, second only to God Himself, you profane that temple at your peril. In a very real sense, none of what is happening now in the legislatures or the courts matter, we are watching the last chapter of a dismal play whose actors are mostly pseudo men of no vision or leadership, less in intelligence than the Wuhan Flu and the backbone of a worm. The upshot is that Joe Biden (or Kamala Harris) will never be the legitimate president of the United States of America.

What will happen, no one really knows, but I fear we will find out.