Mark America

There’s no shooting yet, unless you ask Steve Scalise(R-LA.)  He might well see it differently, and justifiably so.  He was grievously wounded by a leftist madman with plans of wiping out Republicans. Even in the Cold War, there were occasional incidents that involved shootings, even though most people observed the peace, perhaps just barely.  Now we face something different in character.  It is a combination between our worst fears of the growing police state in the era of the War on Terror we’re still fighting, a new version with different motivations than the bloody Civil War we fought one century and one half ago, and the Cold War we didn’t fight, but ended, some thirty years ago.  This new form of war is different in some ways from what we’ve seen in the past.  Our nation is so thoroughly divided that it seems impossible to heal.  Violence threatens from just beneath the surface, only constrained by our lack of desire.  Like all people under the boot of oppression, we will go a long way before we will rise in rebellion.  We don’t want a fight.  We want to be left alone.  Just as in the war on terror, however, the enemy seems bent on denying us that option called peace, and they’re bringing war to us. For now, it’s cold, or at least cool.  As the rabid left continues to agitate for more from their neighbors’ wallets and souls, the temperature is rising fast. Now we find ourselves in a Cold Civil War in which the violence is just beneath the surface and an open war is just one election or one court ruling away.

Alexis de Tocqueville famously warned:

“The American Republic will endure until the day Congress discovers that it can bribe the public with the public’s money.“

We are approaching the end of the American Republic.  Congress discovered in the 1930s that it could bribe the public with the public’s money, and the bribery began in earnest in the 1960s.  Now, the bribery is everywhere.  Now the guns hide just beneath the surface.  There is always the threat that they will be pointed in your face. Somewhere, even now, some statist is contriving the next approach to coerce your rights and your property from your hands.  In fact, there are more statists coming up with ways to spend you into oblivion than there is money to be expropriated and spent.  The Green New Deal is one example, but it’s only the most recent.  Understand that they are willing to use violence.  Let them hem and haw all they will, and let them attempt to conceal their malign plans, but do not let them go without demanding of them: “Where do you get the right to steal from others at gunpoint?”  Do not allow them to hide the gun.  That’s why they immediately shift to nonsense about “social contracts” and so on.  They want to pretend you’ve volunteered to be robbed.

Ladies and gentlemen, we’re in a cold civil war that is just one bad incident or one miserable election from going hot.  Some will moan that I’m far too pessimistic about it, but let’s be blunt, shall we?  Look around.  It’s so bad that we now have Americans turning to theories that may or may not have any basis in reality for belief.  The left has its collusion hoax, while Trumpsters have something I’m investigating called “Qanon.” I know the left’s Russia/Collusion story is a thoroughgoing hoax, but only recently, having encountered advocates of this Qanon business, I’m still investigating.  For all I know, Qanon is a political operation of Trump’s to keep his base in line. (Don’t email me to complain, please, as I’m still investigating this, and this is one of a number of theories floating around the Internet about Qanon.) Still, let us imagine Qanon is substantially real, whatever that means. How far have we fallen that such a character (or collection of them) would constitute the only hope of salvation for America?  How thoroughly bankrupt have we become?  How corrupted is our government and those who not only staff it, but also who choose them?  Why are we looking for a hero rather than rising to be heroes ourselves?  We’ve sat by and let them steal our country, and now we wish for some sort of superman with a bold “Q” emblazoned on his chest to save us from our own intransigence?

We let the statists steal our schools and universities.  Having monopolized these platforms, they stole our children and grandchildren away, now to be used as fodder in the war against us.  We let them control all of our media because we have refused to bankrupt their outlets by simple disuse.  That’s all it would take.  That’s all we would need.  Just stop using them.  Turn off their television channels.  We hang onto their platforms(I’m as guilty as any) like Facebook and Twitter and Youtube because… they’re convenient!   The problem is that they’ve turned it all against us.  Where are we now? How can we claim to support the constitutional republic while we join these villains in a “civil” relationship comprised of their guns and their threats, but only our submission? What sort of mixed signals do we send to our progeny? On the one hand, we talk to them about the evils of the popular culture, but on the other, we partake of it.

It’s awful.  The real problem may be that the left is now pushing so hard that people who are only barely anchored to reality may begin to do completely unhinged things, and some may ultimately involve actual shootings.  First, think of this fool Jussie Smollett, who created a hoax hate attack, all so he could defame Trump and his supporters, but perhaps also to help Kamala Harris(D-CA) and Cory Booker(D-NJ) push their anti-lynching bill through the Senate last week.  Then, on Wednesday, an apparently demented US Coastguard Lieutenant was arrested on terrorism charges in Maryland.  Christopher Paul Hasson, of Silver Springs, was planning to kill a number of leftist federal office-holders in particular, but apparently had a more generalized hate on for all of humanity.

If you view these things as I do, it’s becoming obvious that America is being pushed to the brink.  We are still in a “cold” phase of this second civil war, but that won’t last too much longer.  People from both sides of the divide are now openly talking about this as an eventuality. Warfare is much uglier than most can imagine, but that’s part of the reason to worry:  Too many Americans think warfare is clean and easy, because too few Americans have served in the Armed Forces.  Too few among us have borne the real burdens and costs of war.  War, civil or otherwise, must never be treated as the first or best alternative, and those who seem to place it on the table as a first or best option should be watched closely.  Sometimes, wars must be fought, but never should any person contemplate war too easily or too frivolously.

Despite what prudence tells us, there are those who claim to relish a civil war, and would prefer it become “hot.” This is a danger to be avoided at all costs but one.  We must de-escalate this situation by whatever rational means still remain to us.  If we fail, this situation may break down in a tragic way.  I haven’t been an advocate for liberty and freedom just to see it pissed-away by hot-headed numbskulls on both sides of the ideological divide.  There are too many outside provocateurs, and I worry that what Russia was unable to accomplish by colluding with Obama and Clinton, they now intend to accomplish by pitting one side against the other.  Don’t underestimate that problem.  The world is full of enemies who would be thrilled to see the US consumed and effectively neutered by a domestic civil war.  This is a time of intense danger, friends, and I fear for our republic as never before.

Editor’s Note: It came to my attention after the publication of this post that Mr. L had posted a video with a similar theme and title last summer.  First, I apologize to Mr. L, because it had not been my intention to plagiarize his work, either in title or in content.  As he says so frequently, we are like brothers from different mothers, inasmuch as we frequently agree on many things, though we may arrive at our conclusions by somewhat different paths, or express them in different ways.  Due to that, things like this can happen, but unlike some others on the Internet, I go out of my way to avoid it, even inadvertently.  Second, let me commend that most excellent video, The USA Cold Civil War, and present it here: 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dmlQySp40ig