Life Before Trump

We are all so mesmerized these days by the events unfolding before our eyes that we find it hard to remember, or even imagine, that there was any time before the Trump Era – before that fateful ride down the escalator. But that time did exist, and it paved the way, in ways that are only now starting to be revealed, for not only current events but for a long time to come – possibly right up the end of the United States as a republic. (Note that I said “as a republic”, not necessarily the end of the United States. I can imagine – as many others apparently can – a time when there will be a country called the United States, but it will no longer be a republic, or a democracy, or anything else resembling those concepts. Many people, in fact, believe that we've already reached that point – or did reach it, years or even decades ago. But that's too broad a topic for the present, so I will press on.)

Consider, for a moment, what has already been revealed not only by numerous investigations and in numerous reports, but also (wittingly or otherwise) by the media, as well as by our own eyes and ears. The opposition against Trump and his administration did not appear overnight like some gigantic fungus in the depths of the forest. The groundwork had been laid for a long time, although the process did accelerate considerably under the last administration. One can argue all day and into the night about the when, the why, and the who, but the hard fact is that the State Department, the FBI, the intelligence community, and the military had been thoroughly politicized prior to the start of the 2016 campaign. Government agencies and entities that, in order to function as originally intended, should be as apolitical as possible had been packed with people loyal to the liberal/progressive program, to the Democrats, most recently to the Obama administration, and – above all – to the globalists and globalism. Call it preemptive... call it “insurance”... whatever, the point is that the dice were already loaded in favor of Hillary Clinton (not least, as became known, by the Democratic Party) and against whomever the Republicans managed to nominate. And the most casual survey of the political landscape at that time would have assured anyone on the liberal/Democratic/progressive side that there was no one out there with any chance of beating Hillary. So the final touches – the politicization of those few parts of the government that had not already been politicized by prior administrations was not just about getting Hillary elected; it was a way of policing up the battlefield... consolidating... establishing a future groundwork or structure – a way of solidifying the Deep State in such a thorough way that it could never be defeated or seriously threatened.

So the Deep State was already in place, and politicized, and monolithic on June 16, 2015 – secure in the knowledge that everything was under control, that another one of their own would soon be president, and that there would be a seamless transition between the Obama and Clinton II administrations.

But it goes deeper than that. The solidification of the Deep State was intended to defeat any future Republican (not to mention third-party) candidate for the presidency – and to help defeat Republican candidates for lesser offices as well. And this is not to say that old-fashioned chicanery was no longer in the toolbox; there would always be (as we saw in liberal strongholds like Florida and California) attempts to steal votes, suppress opposition votes, create favorable votes out of thin air – all the old tricks. And the Ministry of Propaganda (AKA the mainstream media) would be running at full speed as well, as would other “agents of influence” like the “entertainment” industry, academia, and social media. (Please remember that the totalitarian impulse is not compatible with close races. Overkill is the method of choice, and total defeat of the opposition is the goal.)

And then we have the state of the Republican Party at the time, which was manifesting all of its least savory traits – passivity, lack of energy, lack of charisma, lack of principles, being easily intimidated and cowed, and generally unable to come up with anything in the way of arguments other than “we're almost as compassionate as the Democrats”. So the Obama administration ran roughshod over the Republicans in an overt, public fashion, and also set up a structure – an insurance policy like unto none before – that would keep the Republicans out of the White House forever. They were winning on both overt and covert levels, in other words... and all was well, until...

Until the fateful escalator ride. And this Trump guy was clearly not just another candidate – another lukewarm body spilling out of the Republican clown car. And enough people in the Obama administration noticed this and realized that, to quote Chris Berman, “He! Could! Go! All! The! Way!” So the structures and people who were already in place to act as insurance, and as agents of gradual change, went into instant overdrive – All hands on deck! – Condition red! – and everything that has happened since then is the result. And it wasn't just that Trump was a Republican (albeit the least typical Republican ever, but he did run on their ticket for lack of a more viable option – not caring to repeat Ross Perot's mistake), but that he came right out and challenged the Deep State (although few called it that at the time) and its collaborators and facilitators in and out of government. In other words, he challenged the Establishment – the ruling elite – the status quo – pretty much everybody who was anybody. And yes, it was, and remains, an “existential threat” as long as he's in office, which is why the effort to get rid of him has not flagged. They have too much to lose – everything to lose, in fact, since political power is the be-all and end-all of their existence. Some people can take or leave politics, but not these people; for them it's like air, water, sustenance, and whole blood rolled into one; it's their life force, without which they would perish.

So... anyone who thinks the Deep State erupted out of nothing and out of nowhere, somehow magically appearing, full-blown, on Escalator Day, is mistaken. It was there, it was fully formed, armed and ready. The networks were in place, as were the power structures and the principal actors. But it was expecting to operate, as it had in the past, in a subversive, subtle fashion – not in a way so obvious and blatant that the most feeble-minded among the electorate could detect it. But Trump changed all that. He forced their hand, and over the ensuing 4 ½ years much of the weaponry, many of the tricks, much of the corruption and deceit has been exposed – partly voluntarily but mostly involuntarily. And there is more to come! And yet – amazingly enough – the world would know nothing of this if Hillary Clinton had been elected in 2016. It would all be there, fully operational, but entirely hidden. But as things stand, the denizens of the Deep State have, out of sheer necessity, appeared by the score before Congressional committees, have stood up and proudly listed their credentials and achievements, and have admitted, without the slightest hint of shame, regret, or self-doubt, that each of them is a single cell of a gigantic organism, and that organism is the power center – the only real power center – in the government – a fourth branch, in effect, compared to which the three branches we're all familiar with are a sham and a facade. They have made it abundantly clear that when it comes to a question of their programs, attitudes, and opinions vs. those of the president who is their nominal boss, it is their way or the highway (for Trump, in this case). They are, after all, the experts... they have the experience, the training, the networks, and the class consciousness necessary to run the country, and Donald Trump does not. (And, in fact, no president does, including Democrats.)

And it's this realization, more than anything else, that has eroded “trust in government” to the point where it no longer exists among significant portions of the citizenry. And this should be troubling, given our pretensions to honest, open, and above-board government... to democracy (however defined)... to “a government of, by, and for the people”. Now we see what we may have just suspected up until now (and yes, that includes “conspiracy theories” cherished by “right-wing nuts”) -- that there are “the people”, and there is government – but that the power relationship only goes in one direction – that we are no longer led by leaders, but ruled by rulers. And some, having a historical perspective and lacking protective naivete about human nature, will say that this is a natural trajectory... that it is -- tragically, perhaps, but inevitably -- what always happens to republics, democracies, governments of the people, etc. in the long run – that there is a gradual shift in power, an erosion of the rule of law, and a gradual takeover by the rich, the cynical, and the unprincipled. It's as if to say, why were we kidding ourselves that we were so different – that we were the first society in human history that could pull it off? But human nature rules in the long run, and we are living in that long run right now (despite John Maynard Keynes, in the long run we're not all dead). And of course, as I've pointed out previously, no one wants to live in “history”; war, revolution, turmoil, etc. are all well and good as long as they don't happen during my time – leave it to others (our ancestors or descendants) to deal with it. And this is especially true if current events all seem to reflect a decline – defeat and disappointment – the next generation not living as well as the previous one, etc. Then we see a rise in nostalgia, like what is happening in our time (all across the political spectrum, actually). But along with it comes a rise in optimism and a simultaneous rise in pessimism, depending on where one stands on the political spectrum. You can be both nostalgic and optimistic, or both nostalgic and pessimistic, and there are plenty of examples of each.

At this point, to be perfectly fair I have to give credit to the opposition, by which I mean the sum total of liberals/Democrats/progressives + the Deep State and its facilitators + popular culture + the media. They all describe Trump and his election as an “anomaly”, and they're right – it is. And it's an anomaly for many reasons. They will say that he shouldn't have been elected (or, in a delusional way, following Hillary Clinton's lead, that he wasn't elected, that he just somehow managed to sneak into the White House under cover of night) because... well, just because. And because he's unsavory in every way... and an outsider... and a businessman... and rich... and everything a normal, acceptable candidate is not. He never buttons his coat, and sits in chairs like some juvenile delinquent in the principal's office. And then there's the fact that his base – the people who elected him – the “deplorables” (and we have to thank Hillary Clinton for etching that term of derision into the lexicon of American politics for perpetuity, especially since it has now become a badge of honor) – were, and are, people who really shouldn't have any say in things, least of all presidential elections, because the truth is not in them. Besides which, they are racist, sexist, homophobic, transphobic, etc. etc. And who knew there were so many of them? – that's the really galling thing. I mean, if the only people who voted for Trump in 2016 had been card-carrying KKK members, or Proud Boys, or whoever, we wouldn't have had this to deal with. But when there are more white supremacists in the local family restaurant on Saturday morning than there are ex-Nazis in Paraguay, drastic measures are in order.

That's the mind set. And you can be certain that they won't make the same mistake again – i.e. they won't let any Republican with two gonads to rub together anywhere near the primaries or the election. Way too chancy. The people who laughed at Trump on Escalator Day and were laughing at him right up to Election Night have learned their lesson: Assume nothing, infiltrate everything, leave nothing to chance, and do whatever is necessary. No more mumbling to your girlfriend on e-mail about “insurance”, no – it's time to get out the WMDs.

This is why the election of 2020 is going to be so interesting (it already is, actually), no matter which hapless Democrat gets nominated and no matter who winds up running on the Republican ticket. (There is a Republican convention, remember – Trump isn't going to be a shoo-in for the nomination even assuming he makes it up to that point.) No, what will be interesting is that the Deep State and all of its allies, once unmasked, will see no point in holding back. They have been exposed now, by their own doing... they are out in the open and blatant... and there is no sense trying to scurry back under cover. So they will be raining fire and brimstone down on the Republican candidate, no matter who he or she is – partly because it's what they do, partly to take care of people who haven't already learned their lesson by seeing what they've done, and are doing, to Trump, and partly as a warning to the Republican Party that if they want to survive at all they need to be content with second-class citizenship in perpetuity. In other words, if they are content to be wallflowers and strap-hangers, fine – but don't start getting any ideas about having any real influence, because what is happening to Trump and his associates can happen to you too, under cover of night and in broad daylight. You can wind up in jail for just existing; this has to have a, let's say, chilling effect on any sort of political assertiveness, and on expressing any opinions at all that are at odds with those of the ruling elite.

There's a thin line, I suppose, between realism and pessimism. In these times they can seem to be pretty much the same thing, and maybe they are. The problems facing whoever's in charge now or in the future are so enormous, and so intractable, that to expect anything other than frustration and failure is to show a high level of delusion. Once again, history has caught up with us, as has human nature. American-style democracy may soon go the way of The New Soviet Man, or of the Ubermensch and the Master Race. And we've had a pretty good run of it, quite frankly – certainly longer than the Soviet Union or Nazi Germany, which had flaws that were too blatant from the start. We were, if you will, sustainable – but not indefinitely. This Republic was conceived by highly-intelligent, well-educated, and certainly far from ignorant men who were under few illusions about human nature. It would be interesting to find out how long they expected it to last before succumbing to degeneration and decay; who knows, they might be surprised it has lasted this long, even if in vestigial form. But they were, after all, men of ideas, and ideas only work if they are workable, and if there is sufficient political will to make them work. So again, this was the case for quite a while – way longer than the French Revolution which was similar in many ways. But that revolution was in 1789 and by 1804 they had an emperor, and in between they had a Reign of Terror and other unpleasantries. (And we were their principal inspiration, by the way – don't forget that.)

Well, we have yet to crown an emperor, although we came close in the case of FDR. Someone once joked that the American system is an odd one – it's a monarchy where we elect a new king every 4 (or 8) years. But that would be to unduly belittle monarchies, some of which have lasted for centuries if not millennia. Maybe what works is not always what's best from the point of view of poly-sci idealism.

To sum up, whatever was put in place over time that has manifested itself in the opposition is not going to go away. It won't go away when Trump leaves office, and it won't go away if a Democrat becomes president. It's a permanent fixture, and some will celebrate this fact, the way one-party rule is celebrated by fans of totalitarian regimes. Competing parties? Debate? Compromise? Way too messy. Much better to just have a single party, and a single party leader – a strongman who commands – demands – obedience from all of his faithful subjects. We forget that this is as strong an impulse – every bit as much as part of human nature – as notions of “freedom”, democracy, populism, etc. And it's a highly cultural phenomenon. The Russians, for example, apparently cannot get along without a strongman in charge; democracy is just not in their blood. The Scandinavian countries, on the other hand, are the true “people's republics”, whose leaders are so low-profile that no one knows who they are. (Do you? I certainly don't.) We have European monarchies that are, operationally, more democratic than most alleged democracies or republics. Such are the paradoxes when it comes to governments.

At this particular time in our history it's the liberals/Democrats/progressives who are all in favor of the all-powerful state, the regulatory state, totalitarianism, and what amounts to one-party rule. They seem to forget what happened to the Old Bolsheviks who, once they had outlived their usefulness, were hunted down by Stalin's henchmen and summarily shot. Their problem? They were rebels and nonconformists by nature, and too full of ideas, and those ideas started to clash with the desires of the more pragmatic (i.e., cynical) types who were rapidly filling the positions of power. There will always be revolutionaries like Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez who will be at the front of the parade, waving a red flag and playing an accordion. But the funny thing is that they very seldom wind up in charge. Their position is like unto that of the point man in a military operation – vital, but with low life expectancy. Sometimes they wind up as cannon fodder for the very entities that they thought were on their side, as happened to the Red Guard in China. The revolution is cannibalistic; as has been said, it always devours its own. But there's no sense in warning them, because they never listen.

So even the Deep State may not always be the property of today's “opposition”; it has its own priorities, its own needs, and its own survival strategies. One point to remember is that the Deep State is motivated solely by its need to survive and expand; otherwise it is as unprincipled, amoral, and unfeeling as a malignant tumor. It is, if you will, reptilian in nature – without compassion and unappealing except to those who see it as a pathway to power. So Democrats who celebrate the Deep State and consider it their power base might have to think again some day – but by then it will be too late. They are, after all, expendable. And the Deep State, because it's a thing and not a person, has staying power well beyond the life span of any one individual. One may even say that it is given birth by war, and nourished by conflict and strife; and if this is the case, its origins followed very closely on the origins of the Republic.

Now, maybe all of this is fine with you. Maybe living under the watchful eye of Big Brother (as currently manifested in the social media, communications, and the intelligence community) is your idea of the good life. If so, then you're quite fortunate, because you're already living in a world tailored to your tastes, and about to live in a world even more so. This will be a cause for celebration. For certain other people, however, this is not the ideal; it's not what they voted for and it's not the world they want to live in. And – most importantly – they're not going away. They have become visible, they have an identity and cohesiveness that's every bit a match for the opposition. The clouds have lifted, and we now, at long last, see that there are two Americas (and maybe more than two), two different world views... two different worlds, in effect. Those worlds are colliding now, in a way that is more open and obvious than ever. The American public is now thoroughly politicized; no one is neutral, no one is “undecided”. We are all “woke”, but in different and opposing ways. (Did you think “wokeness” was limited to just one end of the political scale? Think again. If it's a good thing for one group, then it's a good thing for other groups as well. Otherwise, it's just another word for tyranny.)

I, for one, think the current flood of revelations is a good thing – as stressful, time-consuming, and energy-consuming as it may be. The marketplace of ideas has finally come to pass as somewhere everyone can shop, not just activists and intellectuals. And who knows, if enough people become interested in politics they might also become interested in philosophy; wouldn't that be something! Because politics is, after all, a manifestation of ethics, which, in turn, is a manifestation of philosophy, which, in turn, is a manifestation of our view of man and mankind – of his origins, nature, and ultimate fate.

The downside, of course, is we have to live in a time of war – a war of words, at least. That, and pretty much every negative emotion in the book – which tends to swamp and distract from everything else, things that might be more worthwhile to the individual and, in the long run, to society. But it's a rite of passage that we have to go through – not necessarily in every generation but often enough. Societies re-define themselves now and then, at least on the political and social level if not on the deeper levels of faith, tradition, and custom. Post-empire England is still England. Post-Soviet Russia is still Russia. Post-Maoist China is still China. And so on. (The post-Confederate South is still the South, much to the dismay of non-Southerners.) Of course those were more coherent cultures to begin with, whereas we take great pride in our “diversity”. But that's also our weakness. What it means is that we lack the connective tissue needed to weather storms such as the present one, and come out in one piece rather than in shambles – divided, therefore ready to be conquered. The United States has become disunited, and the great American melting pot turns out to be more of a stew pot. So yes, once this crisis is past we may find that we are no longer the same, even on levels we always thought were permanent and solid. We may, indeed, descend to a more primitive condition of warring tribes. (It's already happening in our large cities.) If so, it will take a government even more powerful, all-seeing, and all-knowing than the one we have now to keep things together – if that's even considered worthwhile. And it may not be, as witness the increasing incidence of anarchy and “no-go zones” in our large cities. The globalists of this world don't want a strong United States with any sort of national pride; they want a muscular but dim-witted and compliant servant to do their bidding – and they already have it to some extent, but it's likely to become even more so in the future.

And once again, if this is OK with you, then fine. Go ahead and cast your lot with the globalists and see how satisfying it is. But what does it take to completely suppress all needs and desires for the eternal verities – home and hearth, family, pride in work, faith, sense of place, and, yes, ethnic and racial identity as a source of cohesion and loyalty rather than a mere political weapon? These are signs of the Natural Man, whereas loyalty to globalism, totalitarianism, and authoritarianism is a sign of – what? I would call it despair. Of giving up, of being less than fully human. Of basically opting out of the human race in favor of a subhuman existence. But it's the sort of despair that will not confine itself to the individual. People who have lost whatever it is that makes them human will waste no time before taking the same thing away from others, by persuasion or by force. The impulse to share the misery and the fear is something we see every day and everywhere in the public forum. It is a sign of weakness and vulnerability. It indicates that we have been conquered from within – and a people that is conquered from within will soon be conquered from without.

Corollary: The Deep State = The Regulatory State = The Surveillance State = The Perpetual Warfare State.

These are four heads of the same beast. They are not identical, but are highly interdependent and symbiotic. No one of them can operate effectively without the others. For example:

• The Deep State depends as much on regulations as on laws for its existence. Laws merely provide the broad outlines; they have to be filled in by regulations. This is why Trump's efforts to reduce the number of regulations are seen as such a threat.
• Regulations are designed primarily to regulate, control, and restrict the activities of the citizenry. Without surveillance, it would be difficult to assess whether regulations were being adhered to.
• Perpetual warfare requires the Deep State for implementation, and surveillance in order to insure that the citizenry are “with the program” and are not developing an aversion to perpetual war.
• Since the Deep State and the Perpetual Warfare State are inseparable, it's foolish to be against “big government” but in favor of war, as the neocons are.  War is impossible without the Deep State, a highly-regulated economy and industrial base, and surveillance.  Every war we've ever fought shows this, and yet there are people who don't believe that's it's necessarily the case.
• It's also foolish to protest against surveillance but be in favor of big government. Big government naturally gives rise to surveillance as a means of determining the level of cooperation of the citizenry. And, the Surveillance State, over time, becomes an increasingly large portion of the Deep State. One reason the Soviet Union collapsed is that half the citizens were employed spying on the other half.

There are many more interconnections. The point is that it is, ultimately, all one thing, so we each have a choice – we can be for all of them or none of them. Anything else is irrational, illogical, and a symptom of delusional thinking.

Welcome to My Nightmare

Last night I had the strangest dream. It was November of 2020 and I was in a voting booth, and I looked down at the ballot for the president, and the only two names on it were Hillary Clinton and Mitt Romney. Then I woke up bathed in sweat with my heart pounding, and it took me a while to realize that this was not only a nightmare, but it was a nightmare that could very well come true!

Here we are, 12 months plus change from the 2020 election, and who is positioning himself to run for the Republican nomination? None other than the loser from 2012. And he is bolstering his “Never Trumper” credits on a daily basis, standing up, like Superman, for “truth, justice, and the American way” against treachery, treason, and criminality (not to mention bad manners and bad hair). And of course part of his plan is that Donald Trump will, in fact, be out office by November of 2020, and it matters little how or why – the main thing is that Romney will by that time be seen as the salvation of the Republican Party – the man who can set things right and rid them of the taint of Trump. What will he have to offer the American public as an incentive to not only vote, but to vote for him, other than the fact that he is not Donald Trump? Nothing in particular, just the same old boring mainstream Republican pap, which typically features pleas along the lines of “We're almost as compassionate as the Democrats.” Which is not a winning formula, as had been amply demonstrated already. Romney will run as the anti-Trump and his platform will be, basically, to pledge that the Republicans will never never never, and we mean it, nominate anyone even remotely like Trump ever again. Great – but the Democrats already occupy that territory, so why not just vote for them and be certain? (And by the way, if you think the Democrats/liberals/leftists would ever give the Republicans credit for ousting Trump – in the event that occurs – think again. The Republicans will be forced to live a life of austerity and penance for generations to come. Which, in turn, is saying that they will be rendered extinct on the national level, leaving a gap to be filled by – whom? But that's a topic for another day.) (And also by the way, if not Romney, who? Does anyone even remember who was in the gaggle of Republican candidates who fell, one by one, to the Trump tidal wave in 2016? And has anyone heard anything from them since? The fact that Romney, for all his faults, is willing to stand up and be counted at this point may be all he needs in the way of credentials.)

What about Hillary, then? She is rapidly moving from the impossible and unthinkable into at least the “buzz” category, and has, of late, been much more vocal in her opposition to Trump (although she's been making excuses for why she lost since Election Night 2016). Add to this the impression that she and Joe Biden are the only halfway normal human beings in the bunch, the rest being delusional on some level or just plain frauds. (And doesn't it say something about that motley crew that Hillary, by comparison, can appear normal? “Sad”, as Trump would say.) Then we have three very important facts: (1) The Clintons and Obama still control the Democratic Party, no matter how many empty suits pretend to be in charge; and (2) The Deep State political machine that Obama and Hillary put in place is intact, alive and well, and eager to, once again, enter the fray (actually, they never left it); and (3) The mainstream media are more fanatically anti-Trump than ever, as is the “entertainment” industry.

The only bump in the road should Hillary capitulate to all of her adoring admirers and declare for the presidency again is the basket of already-declared candidates, who have already expended considerable time and money on their campaigns, with the election still more than a year away. They are likely to be somewhat upset should Hillary ride into the Democratic convention on a white charger and insist on being nominated by popular acclaim. But you can be sure that they will fall into line with nary a peep, the way poor old Bernie did in 2016 even though he knew he'd been cheated. As a number of commentators have pointed out, the Democrats' strength is in their unity; they may have their occasional squabbles, but when the chips are down they always present a united front – something the Republicans have never seemed to be capable of.

So anyway, that was my nightmare – although some would prefer to call it a dream.

Footnote 1: Unlike Hillary's case, Donald Trump does not own the Republican Party. It would be more accurate to say they have disowned him. So don't expect loyalty to play any part in next year's election; in fact, disloyalty will play a much bigger part, as exemplified by Mitt Romney. The Never Trumpers are alive and well and living not only in Congress, but in the Republican Party hierarchy. Now, whether they will have the nerve to defy tradition and refuse to re-nominate Trump is another question; it kind of depends on how afraid they are of the grass roots. After all, even if Trump is denied a second term, most of them will still be in contention for re-election. I imagine we'll see a variety of responses to this dilemma. And there will be a lot of strange new respect for anyone who takes part in the mutiny even at the risk of their own political career.

Footnote 2: Hillary vs. Tulsi Gabbard – why single her out? Because she's the only one of the Democratic candidates who has been making libertarian-type noises. And in Hillary World, libertarian = defiance of rightful authority (i.e., her) and skepticism regarding overseas adventures (vs. the Democrats' newfound respect for endless war) – among many other things, no doubt. So Tulsi has to go. But that's not as much of an issue as the fact that Hillary is already engaged in a debate with a declared Democratic candidate; maybe she felt that Tulsi was the lowest-hanging fruit, and thus a good test case, considering the number of other candidates Hillary would have to run off the road in order to win the nomination. And as for Jill Stein, since Hillary is now blaming her and the Green Party for her loss in 2016, the Greens have to be neutralized by being identified as Russian puppets.

Footnote 3: As I've said before, Trump basically threw the Republican Party a lifeline by winning in 2016. The problem is, they refused to take hold of it, so they maintained their position as perpetual losers who are rendered acutely uncomfortable by winning. Now, when it comes to 2020, if Trump wins with or without their support, it will create another opportunity to take hold of the same lifeline, and I imagine that will be rejected as well. If Trump (or some other Republican) loses in 2020, the Republican Party is doomed on the national level, for the simple reason that “they” – the opposition – will never forgive the Republicans for having nominated Trump in 2016, never mind that many of them opposed him and have dug in their heels on his programs ever since. And the idea of the Democrats, and the opposition in general, giving the “Never Trumpers” in the Republican Party “credit”? Ha! They will be flushed down the toilet along with all the rest. (Who knows, maybe on some level the Democrats see the Republican “Never Trumpers” as being disloyal, and disloyalty is the greatest sin a Democrat can commit – as amply demonstrated by Bernie's abject capitulation to Hillary in 2016.)

Red, White, and Blue Bloods

Now that I've pronounced doom on the Republican Party (even though there is much more to say on the matter) I'll move on to a much broader topic, namely the American Empire and the U.S. as the world's policeman. A wise man once said, “anything that can't go on forever will end”, and this has proven to be true of empires (at least the earthly kind), and there is no reason it will not prove to be true of ours. Empires are notorious, in fact, for coming to an end – usually ignominious, but sometimes with a minimum of pain, as witness the ends of the British, French, and Soviet empires, still within recent memory. (A generation or two earlier saw the more painful end of the German overseas empire, the Ottoman Empire, and before that the Spanish, etc.) It's not necessary that a given empire is conquered, as the Roman Empire was; most of them rot from within, from an erosion of political will, diminishing resources, and just plain demoralization. Empires go along with aggressive nationalism, and when the cultural, social, political, and economic basis for nationalism is reduced to some critical level, the empire, which seemed so permanent and invincible, collapses – much to the dismay and mystification of its adherents. The point is, this will happen – it's inevitable. It's a matter of when, and by what means, and what will remain. England and France wound up quite intact, and arguably better off; Russia is trying to regain some of its former glory, with limited success; Germany lost its empire as a result of World War I, and lost pretty much everything else as a result of World War II, but has gained much of it back because, as an acquaintance of mind put it, “the advantage Germany has is that it's full of Germans”. And yet nations, in a post-empire period, do manage to salvage some respect; they are no longer to be feared, but they are not about to be erased from the world map either. What keeps them in business, so to speak, are what I call the “eternal verities” – race, ethnicity, language, culture, and yes, faith – and these, note, are the very things that the globalists are waging war on at this time. (And don't be fooled by “identity politics” and “diversity”; those are strategies to liquidate the nation on the cultural level, not strengthen it.) A nation that asserts and shows pride in these things is likely to survive, whereas a nation that does not is doubly doomed – no more empire, and, eventually, no more nation. (Oh, did I mention borders? That's another essential quality of a nation. And we're busy giving up ours.)

So where do we stand in all this? Well, for starters, this country was not founded – at least not explicitly – on the basis of race, ethnicity, language, faith, or culture. It had a dominant race (white), a dominant ethnicity (English), a language (English), a faith (Protestant deism), and... well, not much in the way of culture, let's admit. But it was, in essence, ideational, i.e. founded not on the sorts of things that have characterized nations throughout history, but on ideas, as expressed in the founding documents of the Republic. And those ideas served us well for a while, and continue to do so, if only in the iconic (I'm tempted to say “fetishistic”) sense. They are, in fact, a kind of crumbling bulwark against what has become a wildly “diverse” society, in which all races, all languages, all cultures, and all faiths (and non-faiths) have a right to stand up and be heard, and to join the culture wars, i.e. the battle for the so-called “soul of America”. But America's “soul” is ideas, and ideas can change, and morph, and become obsolete much more readily than the more solid, natural, organic factors that traditionally define nations. (Try to find one idea from the writings of the Founding Fathers that would not cause outrage and demonstrations on college and university campuses today, and in the media – you won't find any.)

And can a nation characterized as such remain an empire? Don't the same factors that are essential to the strength and coherence of a nation apply to its empire as well? And if our nation is rotting from within, how is that supposed to be consistent with the persistence of an empire? It can't, but – again, historically – we see that, oftentimes, an empire can persist, at least for a while, even if things are collapsing on the home front. The Roman legions were spread across the known world even as Rome itself was decaying and collapsing – and we see much the same thing today. We have a military “presence”, and “force projection”, all over the globe, even while the White House is under siege and American “ideals” are under criticism and attack. It's a strange sight, to be sure – but one that is all too familiar to anyone with a sense of history. (And the rest of the world looks on in wonder, as it did when the Roman Empire came to an end – “Lo, how the mighty have fallen!”)

And when you think about it, the American Empire is a relatively new thing, historically speaking. For that matter, America itself is a relatively new thing. When the English colonies coalesced into The United States of America, it didn't take long before age-old empire urges began to surface; I'll make the Mexican War the beginning of this (although, even there, we're at least talking about adjoining territory, the difference being that we had to fight Mexico for it, whereas in the case of the Louisiana Purchase, it was one colonial power selling a piece of property to the former colony of another colonial power – which seems just, in a kind of way). But real colonialism got a shot in the arm with the Spanish-American war, where we wound up with territories halfway around the world; that's the true beginning of empire.

But then a curious thing happened. On top of the age-old empire urge, we acquired a new meme, if you will, namely that we had to – for some reason not ever quite fully explained or justified – become the world's policeman. This began in earnest when we joined up in World War I, which was supposed to “make the world safe for democracy”, but which actually made it less safe for democracy and more safe for communism and fascism. But we had a foothold on the world map, and that's what counts. And in between world wars, we pursued the Monroe Doctrine with a vengeance, charging down on any number of rebellious and upstart movements in the Western Hemisphere – allegedly in pursuit of law and order, but it was really about commercial interests. (The American Empire has always been at least as much commercial as military in intent and outcome, and it remains so to this day with the exception of the Middle East, which is purely political.)

And throughout all of these developments up to the present day, a few isolated voices were raised along the lines of “What business it is of ours?”, and “What gives us the right...”, and “Whose real interests are being served here?”, and so on. But those voices were promptly shouted down on the basis of such well-thought-out notions as “Because we're the best”, and “We need to teach those people a lesson”, not to mention verbal tics like “spreading democracy” and “protecting the American way of life”, which were invented to cloud people's minds and keep them from seeing what's really going on.

And this is not to say that there weren't people of influence along the way who really, sincerely believed that we had something to offer the benighted masses of the Third World – or the oppressed masses of the Second World. That may have been true, but the way to spread the gospel of democracy is not to start bombing and sending in troops; spreading ideas through violence is a contradiction in terms, even if it seems to actually work on occasion. Even if you can get people (whoever survives the invasion) to embrace our ideas, it is more often than not a sham; they are just mouthing words in order to stay on our good side (assuming there even is a good side in these situations). Eventually, if and when we ever leave (a rare event), the old ways return and, sooner or later, it's as if we were never there. We can poke as many holes in the ocean as we like, but unless we stick around to reinforce, protect, and maintain those holes they are going to vanish as soon as our last soldier goes back across the border. Because, once again, we are fighting traditionally-based culture with ideas. The Russians and the Chinese tried it with communism – the idea to end all ideas – and once communism in the strict, or “pure”, sense collapsed of its own weight the old culture – the “pre-idea” culture, if you will – returned. This country at least had the advantage of starting off as a blank slate, culturally speaking, which meant that ideas could gain, and maintain, more of a foothold here, because there was nothing to compete against. And yet even in what one might call “pioneer” nations, an organic culture will arise sooner or later; it's just against human nature to live in a cultural vacuum for very long. And once that new culture asserts itself, it competes with ideas for the loyalty and dedication of the citizenry – as can be seen throughout this country at the present time. Take more than ten steps outside of the National Archives, where the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution are housed and meticulously cared for like ancient mummies, and you run into people with radically different notions of man, society, and how one is to live. And they aren't all aliens, fresh off the boat; most are citizens and voters, whose families have lived here for generations. The ideas that gave rise to “diversity” – or at least to its toleration – have turned out to be self-destructive. I'm not saying this is either good or bad; it's just the way things are.

So – the fool's errand to end all fool's errands is for us to venture overseas in order to convert the unwashed and ignorant masses to the American way of thinking, which is based entirely on ideas which must seem impossibly abstract to said masses, and for which, in order to take them seriously, one must give up loyalty to things with more solidity and permanence. Plus, the fact that this is undertaken, in most cases, as a thin veneer for empire building and commercial interests, AKA imperialism, makes it even less likely to succeed and take root. So, once again, when we leave our ideas leave, and things return to normal. The problem is that there are very few examples of this because we almost never leave; the main exception in recent times has been Vietnam, and we left because we lost a war, which is also a rare occurrence.

And even if take back the bulk of our troops, we invariably leave “peacekeepers” behind, as we did in Germany and Japan. Is our military presence only a way of insuring continuing commercial advantage, or is it also a form of insurance, i.e. making certain the country in question doesn't make the same mistake – getting into a war with us – again? I say it's both, and that the two motives are complementary. The military is there to intimidate, and the commercial presence is there to soften the blow by offering economic advantages, trade being the most obvious. So we wind up with a world filled with client states who are not quite happy slaves, but who must wonder, once in a while and in the stillness of the night, what it would be like if we would just get out of their lives. And who knows, they may find out sooner than they think, if things continue the way they are going.

All of which leads to the question implied at the beginning. If the American Empire and America as world policeman can't go on forever, it will have to stop. But even when it does, the world will still be there, with all of its pathologies and discontents. So what happens then? Does someone else step up and assume the world's policeman role, or do they decide, right off the bat, to reject that hypocrisy and assert raw power? (In which case, history not only fails to end, but it starts running in reverse.) Russia and China are already making moves in that direction, and they are certainly our most likely successors. And no, I'm not forgetting the E.U., but, lest we forget, the E.U. has no troops, and neither does NATO – not really. NATO has never been anything more than the U.S. and a bunch of other guys, and the E.U. is the other guys without the U.S. These sorts of entities do not an empire make – at least not in any traditional or lasting form. Can you imagine the E.U., or NATO, going up against a resurgent Russia without Uncle Stupid providing muscle? I can't bear to look! And I suppose the U.N. is going to go toe-to-toe with China (or even North Korea) without muscle-bound us in the mix. Forget about it!

And this, I suppose, is the reasoning of the globalist powers-that-be. They may despise us and consider us uncultured, primitive slobs and idiots suitable only for cannon fodder, but they have a hard time imagining the world without us – the way the owner of a vast estate couldn't imagine getting along without his serfs and servants. And yet, “something will happen”. The world as it is is in such flux, and there is so much instability on all fronts, that things as they are simply cannot stand, any more than a machine shedding nuts and bolts and leaking oil is going to run much longer. The conservatives who want nothing to change, ever, are dreaming. The revolutionaries at least know that things can't go on, but they imagine that they're the ones who are going direct the changes and own the future (“Well, it worked for Lenin and Mao, why not for us?”) – but they may be wrong too. And even if they win some near-term victories, revolutions are notorious for devouring their own; revolutionaries who win actually have a lower life expectancy than those who lose. So the future may not be as rosy as they think. In any case, take heart – if you don't like the American Empire, be assured that it will vanish some day. The question is, will America survive its empire, and if so in what form? Hopefully not abject slavery, but even that is not assured.

The Republican Party post-Trump

I briefly considered being a wise-ass and just posting this title followed by nothing but a blank page. But I decided that would constitute a disservice to my loyal fans (ahem!) so am going to flesh out the idea a bit.

The point being that the Republicans do have a future, but just not on the national level. They will continue to be players in various redoubts across the fruited plain – not including the coasts, of course, nor various liberal enclaves in flyover country (cities controlled by Democrats plus university towns). They will enjoy dominance in some state legislatures and may be elected governors – although how much good it will do is questionable, since judges everywhere seem committed to reinforcing the “progressive” agenda at all costs. And they will, of course, be active at the county, small city, town, and village level. But on the national level I consider them the walking dead, and here's why.

But first a comment. Now and then someone – not necessarily a disgruntled Republican, it could be a liberal engaging in triumphalism – will contend that Donald Trump killed the Republican Party by, first, having the unmitigated gall to enter the Republican primaries in 2016, then to be nominated (aided by the Russians, no doubt), and then to be elected (ditto). And Republicans ever since then have been wringing their hands that here's this Godzilla-like creature in their midst who's ruining everything and giving Republicans a bad name, and that the nation will never forgive the Republicans for having foisted Trump off on them, and that this spells doom for generations to come, et cetera.

I have a slightly different take on this. My opinion is that Trump actually saved the Republican Party from its own boring, colorless incompetence... injected new life into it (or tried to)... and kept it, basically, alive for four more years (or however long) since it was at death's door by the end of the Obama administration, and a Hillary victory would have been the coup de grace (or coup de disgrace, whatever). The problem is that most Republicans, and especially the “never Trumpers”, would disagree with this, and contend that the party would be in much better shape now if it hadn't been forced to, somehow, support, or at least not oppose, the bulk of Trump's initiatives. Party loyalty is, of course, party loyalty, not loyalty to any one person; all we have to do is go back to the Watergate era to find confirmation of that. (And at a slightly earlier time, a lot of Democrats bailed on LBJ.) But sometimes party loyalty involves compromise – doing what you have to do. And yet there were, and are, people who disagree, the foremost example being John McCain, who took an active role in subverting the Trump administration from Day One.

But the point is that Trump, simply by being who he is and doing what he did, at least kept the Republican “brand” on the market, even though it was an operation not unlike the process of keeping a disembodied brain alive in a jar like in some horror movie. (Except in the case of the Republicans, he was keeping a body alive without a brain.)

So Trump gave the Republicans a new lease on life, except they didn't want it and didn't appreciate it. They would rather be dead (as a party) than be seen as supporting Trump, as many of them said quite explicitly during the 2016 campaign. Distance from Trump = virtue and respectability, is the message. He is as much an outsider to them as he is to the liberals/Democrats/progressives.

All of which is going to make a very interesting election season next year. Assuming that Trump survives impeachment, and doesn't simply leave office of his own free will (a very real possibility in my opinion, but not too many other people seem to have considered it), the Republicans will be faced with a bizarre dilemma – let him run again (primaries, convention, campaign) even though their support for him is lukewarm at best, and in most cases nonexistent – or call an end to the Trump Era by either not letting him into the primaries, or into the convention, i.e. by not nominating him for a second term. They are, after all, already feeling the pain of having lost the House of Representatives, which they blame squarely on Trump... and their chances of regaining it next year are nil, and they stand a good chance of losing the Senate as well, which they will also be happy to blame on Trump.

So what are they supposed to do? Hang on to Trump (or allow him to hang onto them), as troublesome as he is, even if it means losing all control of Congress and reasserting their status as irrelevant and moribund? Or try someone new and hope that all will be forgiven, and that they will be restored to (this time legitimate) power in the White House, and win back the Senate as well?

And if not Trump, which candidate is going to save the day for the Republicans? I don't see anyone out there who has even the vaguest presidential “vibes”. If they stick with tradition, I guess they could nominate Mike Pence, but like Gerald Ford in 1976 no amount of decontamination and no number of hot showers is going to rid him of the “cooties” of his old boss. So what will most likely happen is that they will, in a state of tacit despair, nominate some empty suit who can't possibly win just as a place filler, the way they nominated Bob Dole in 1996 and Mitt Romney in 2012 just to stay in the game. “Hey, it's not our fault, we nominated a fairly normal guy this time.” And then they get to return to the soporific creature comforts of minority status, except this time for keeps. Which means, incidentally, that the U.S. finally capitulates and converts to a one-party system on the national level, which is an inevitable characteristic of tyrannies and dictatorships everywhere, and that the Democratic primaries become the equivalent of the election, assuming that the Republicans even bother having primaries any longer. (Many states, cities, and counties already have a one-party system, and you can generally tell which they are by measuring their level of incompetence, corruption, and downright failure – not to mention less-exalted measures like the number of homeless and the incidence of fecal matter on public property.)

But why else, aside from their general demeanor and appearance, are the Republicans the walking dead? It's because they have become a minority party that can barely capture enough independent and “swing” votes to win elections, except in certain “deep red” locales. And why, in turn, is this? One reason is the power of ideas; the Democrats have them, and the Republicans don't. Say what you like about “AOC”, she has ideas. They may be wrong-headed, foolish, and delusional, and reflect profound ignorance, but they are ideas, and they serve to energize and inspire. And when revolution is in the air, ideas are all that count; cold reason and pragmatism can take a hike. And, of course, youth must triumph! By definition! Of course, the youth of the 1960s are now the grizzled products of the culture wars, whether they consider themselves to be on the winning side or not. They may have won many battles, but the culture war is still on or Trump would never have been elected.

Is there a Republican AOC out there anywhere? Some talk-show hosts might qualify, but they already have paying jobs and are not about to enter politics. We are, once again, in a time of revolution, the way we were in the 1960s, and the Young Turks in Congress are at the forefront, with the Old Guard forced to deal, cope, dither, rationalize, whatever it takes to hold on to their weakening grip on power. (The 60s were not just about “sex, drugs, and rock & roll”, although those were the loss leaders. They were about more profound cultural changes, which took root then and are being promoted to new levels at the present time. Anyone who wonders when this process will stop – when it will be “mission accomplished” – has missed the concept of continuous revolution, of which the most prominent advocate was Chairman Mao, but which has plenty of lesser followers, including the present-day governments of Cuba and Venezuela. For them, the revolution is not finished until Utopia is realized, and since Utopia can never be realized, the revolution is never over. Call it a full employment act for “agents of change”.)

Another reason – and this is old news, but still – is that the Democrats are busy importing new constituents from other countries, primarily Central America but other places as well. And these people are willing to do work that Americans just won't do – namely reproduce. So... to over-generalize just a bit, you have self-sterilizing Democrats, and liberal eunuchs, bolstering their numbers by letting in people who have a vested interest in their programs, i.e. “benefits”. It's a smart move, for sure. And even if Republicans do have an edge when it comes to reproduction (it would be more accurate to say that traditionalists of many different kinds have an edge in that department), there's no way it can make up for what amounts to a siege from the Third World. There is a human wave – nay, a tsunami – coming across our southern border every day. History will record this as one of the great migrations of humanity, but it's hard to appreciate historical significance when you're getting overrun. (One consolation for those who don't believe in the American Empire is that this may be the biggest single factor in its demise; time will tell.)

Then you have good old generational differences – and, as always, the revolutionaries are on the young side and the conservatives are on the old side. This is not to say that the conservatives will some day be totally replaced by the revolutionaries, because even in the worst of times there are people who, somehow, manage to engage in rational thinking... but we are, basically, looking at a revolutionary society on the national level (a process which has been building slowly over a century at least, but which is now coming to full fruition) which will do everything in its power (which is considerable) to silence and neutralize all opposition, if not engage in its outright extermination. (As things stand, the liberals are busy exterminating themselves through abortion, which is ironic to say the least. So the race is on – do they cease to exist before, during, or after the revolution? Time will tell. And if they do cease to exist, who keeps the revolution going?)

So, to sum up, Trump arguably saved us from a headlong rush into this fate for... maybe not even four years, depending. But it does seem inevitable, and that applies in any case – Trump getting re-elected, some other Republican getting elected, or a Democrat getting elected in 2020. The long-term trends are what they are... and I haven't even touched on aggravating factors like the national debt, crony capitalism, environmental degradation, infrastructure, the cost of empire, the collapse of our public education system, social media turning us all into robots, corruption in general, and so on. Everything else that's happening at this time can be considered an accelerant; there are no counter-trends that I can think of. Trump's hard-core supporters will continue to be so until the day he moves back to his golden palace atop Trump Tower, but they're not going to matter as long as Trump loses the narrow edge he achieved in various states in 2016. Those weren't all Trump supporters; there were also “never Hillary” voters in the mix. But they won't be a factor next year (unless she runs again – and yes, she's thinking about it). And there were also independents who cared for neither candidate but figured Trump might be preferable, or more palatable, for some reason. (For one thing, he's rich enough not be bribed, which is no small consideration.) Well, now he's had a chance to prove himself, at least in terms of initiatives, if not actual accomplishments – and it's up to people to decide whether that's good enough, and I suspect that enough of them will decide that it's not good enough and thus flip some of those states that delivered for Trump in 2016. As always in any election, the hard core tends to remain the hard core; what changes (and who the candidates are really trying to appeal to) are the independents, “undecideds”, and plain pragmatists – how does it affect my quality of life, my pocketbook, etc.? These are what we might call the non-idea people – not that they're uneducated or ignorant, simply that they are not into ideas or ideology. They are bottom line-oriented, in other words. And yet they're the ones who really count. Trump can have all the enthusiastic, high-energy rallies he wants – as can Biden, Sanders, Warren, Butti-whatever, et al. – but a minority is still a minority. I'm not even convinced that the Democrats can patch together a majority out of true believers either; that's why they need to recruit new voters from other countries. Those voters, I imagine, are much more pragmatic and “bottom line” than most citizens; if you can vote other people's money into your own pocket you'd be a fool not to. Traditional American notions of self-sufficiency are simply not on their radar.

So what we may well see next year, in one fashion or another, is the final death rattle of the Republicans on the national level – an event which will be celebrated far and wide, no doubt. And the conventional wisdom will be that Trump was what did it – he was the bull in the china shop, the disrupter, the destroyer. But if that's true, once Trump leaves the political stage the Republicans should expect to recover whatever respect they enjoyed before he took that fabled escalator ride. The problem with that idea is they didn't enjoy any such respect, except possibly in their own deluded world view. And remember that Trump's hard-core supporters didn't vote for him because he was a Republican; they voted for him because he was who he was. (He might even have won as an independent candidate, the way Ross Perot tried to do.) So without him to prop them up, the Republicans are going to collapse – said collapse being long overdue. And Trump's hard-core supporters will fade back into the fields and forests of flyover country, satisfied that, for one brief shining moment, their voices were heard and their values were honored. They will hunker down and wait out the revolution, hoping that one day they, or their descendants, will once again have a voice.

Ideas Whose Time Has Come. Part I: The Middle Kingdom, Democracy, Globalism, and Islam

“May you live in interesting times.” Thus, an ancient Chinese curse. Yes, a curse – the idea being that life is better without wars and strife and contention, and that the alternative is much less desirable. Of course, the “Middle Kingdom” prided itself – as it continues to do to this day – on being a center of stability and predictability, especially where government is concerned. This is, of course, a long-term goal, and the occasional punctuation of revolutions, the Red Guard, the Great Leap Forward, and “continuous revolution” are the exceptions rather than the rule. One might say that the Chinese are better at consolidation than they are at revolution. Add to this the fact that China has been – perhaps uniquely among large and developed societies – less than enthusiastic about establishing and maintaining overseas empires. That particular virus has only infected them to the extent of supporting North Korea and North Vietnam, which, after all, do border on China; contrast that with the European empires of old, and the American empire of the present day, for which no place on the planet is too remote, or too lacking in value, to be a candidate for imperialism and empire-building. Aside from North Korea, the focus of China at this point seems to be limited to the South China Sea – a non-trivial matter but still no match for our own lust for the Near East, Latin America, and other regions – and, once again, at least on its own border.

Imagine, if you will, a large and wealthy country stable enough, and content enough, to mind its own business. Unheard of! And yet China has been pulling it off for millennia – once again with occasional exceptions. The concept of empire, which, in our time, means an overseas empire, seems almost universal by comparison. The European powers tried it, and succeeded – for quite a long time, but eventually gave up on the idea, through sheer fatigue and through finally getting real about the true economic and social costs. We have not yet reached that stage, and Russia is giving it another shot, although quite modest compared to the Iron Curtain and international communism of the 20^th Century.

Of course it can be argued that the empire urge is no longer characterized mainly by military attack, conquest, and occupation, but is now more along economic lines. And by this criterion, the Chinese have, in fact, established, and are vigorously pursuing, an economic empire, which has crossed our doorstep and is firmly ensconced in our own economy. And the American Empire is, likewise, much more than military, and is also largely economic – and yet, there is a military aspect to it as well. When economic activity doesn't suffice, then we have the military as a kind of Plan B. But what is at least as common is that the military is Plan A, and economic consolidation is Plan B, with diplomacy constantly running to catch up with the status quo. Diplomacy is, if you will, in charge of rationalization of actions already taken and having succeeded up to a point. Diplomacy is, in other words, a tool of the consolidation stage, where the big battles (if not the war) have already been won. And yet there is always a residual military aspect to things, which, I guess, amounts to a reminder of what can happen if diplomacy fails. Why else would we still have troops stationed in all of the defeated nations we fought against in World War II – Germany, Japan, and Italy?

So yes, these can be considered “interesting times”, and no time in American history has been as interesting as the very present, i.e. the Trump administration. Search all you like through books on American history, and you'll fail to find a case where an elected, sitting president was accused of treason. Not acting in the best interests of the Republic (as defined by whoever is trying to make the case), fine – that's nothing new. But actual treason – being on the side of the enemy (real or alleged) – this is something truly new under the sun. And yet, not only has this been the theme of mainstream media coverage for more than two years, it seems to be believed by a goodly portion of the American public. And the fact that it's outrageous – that it's straight out of La-La Land – doesn't seem to deter those who promote the idea.

But the real question is not so much about the facts of the matter, but about why this idea has been widely accepted. Or, to put it another way, why it has been promoted by people who may or may not actually believe it, and then widely accepted by people who really do believe it (the classic model of propaganda, by the way). There are many reasons to consider this as a milestone of sorts, and the most compelling one is that it may well signal the end of democracy as we have come to know it, and the beginning of contention (that word again) among nothing more than warring parties, interest groups, victim groups, people with a “cause”, and people with a vested interest in totalitarianism. Because the strategy and tactics of the “opposition” do not differ, in any significant way, from the strategy and tactics of totalitarian movements of the 20^th Century, to include communism, fascism (the real kind), and Nazism. It has become the dream of Friedrich Nietzsche, who – having despaired of all alternatives – declared that power, and the lust for power, were the only real, and genuine, and desirable, characteristics of the human condition, everything else being illusion, misguided idealism, weakness, and plain foolishness. We are, in a sense, at the portal of a Nietzschean world, where it's all about power and nothing else, and that all of the pretenses and cloaks (e.g. of “democracy” and “freedom”) are only that – food for fools, for the duped and the ignorant, who prefer their illusions to reality.

And this argument is easy to make! We venture overseas in order to spread, or defend, “democracy”, and the result is, more often than not, death and destruction, and nothing even remotely resembling democracy as we have known or understand it. But what does this mean? That democracy is an illusion after all? That it's just a cover for some other kind of tyranny? That it is, to steal a phrase from Karl Marx, the true “opiate of the people” (given that pure communism was too strong a dose – a fatal one, in many cases)? But this would be to oversimplify, since it can be shown that, in fact, pretty much any form of government works, up to a point, for someone, and that no form of government works for everyone at all times and in all places. But why is this? It gets back to – as I've pointed out before – national character – you know, that elusive thing that makes some political systems succeed and others fail depending on where, and how, and when, they are implemented. There are places in the world where any form of democracy is doomed from the start, and it may have something to do with economics in the abstract sense, but is much more dependent on culture – on people's world view, on their concept of government and of authority, on their willingness to negotiate and compromise, but most of all on loyalty. Loyalty not to political ideas imported from elsewhere, but to family, tribe, ethnic group, religion – you know, all those annoying things that the globalists abhor and are trying their best to wipe out.

But globalism is a belief system as well, every bit as much as other materialistic belief systems were and are. Communism was originally meant, in theory, to be applicable to any country, any culture, anywhere on the planet – and it has certainly, over time, made inroads pretty much everywhere, with varying degrees of success. But even communism, as monolithic as it seems (or would like to be), has taken on a multitude of characteristics depending on where it crops up and where it is implemented (or imposed). There is not just one “flavor” of communism – it is far more dependent on those “eternal verities” (family, ethnicity, religion) than its promoters would like to admit. But the same thing is true of democracy. So the “world war of ideas”, if you will, is forever being fought on one level, while the substrate of culture remains (either openly or underground).

The globalists would like to claim that, when it comes to government, one size fits all – and that anyone who objects, or resists, is simply not with the program – is ignorant, is not enlightened, is too stuck in the past, is “clinging” (to use the word of a famous globalist) to old and ancient forms of human society and organization. And this is our misconception as well. If “democracy” worked so well in the United States, there is no reason why it should not work equally well anywhere else on the planet.  (And even if democracy in America had, and continues to have, its flaws, it's still preferable to any of the known alternatives -- you know, things like monarchy and theocracy, etc.)

But this would be to miss something that is seldom pointed out. In a sense, America as a society started out as a kind of tabula rasa – a blank slate – a platform, if you will, upon which any form of governance could be tried, because the populace was, to a considerable extent, deracinated – i.e. deprived (either voluntarily or by accident) of any sort of roots, or connections, to enduring cultures. It has been said (and mostly in a tone of approval) that America was, and is, an “experiment” – that's it's something new under the sun, and a golden opportunity to establish, and maintain, a government that is based on principles and ideals rather than old ways, traditions, habits, and superstitions. We cherish our self-image as a free people, gifted with a new continent upon which to make our mark, and in which anything that occurs to the mind of man is not only possible, but desirable, and (by logical extension) worth fighting for, and (by further logical extension) worth “spreading”, through whatever means necessary, to the relatively benighted regions of the planet which have not been so blessed.

All of which would be highly commendable, except for that pesky thing called human nature. It followed the Pilgrims to Massachusetts Bay, and continues to beset us 400 years (as of next year) later. It's the very imperfectibility of man that dictates that human societies will, likewise, be imperfectible – and that any attempt to do otherwise will inevitably result in tyranny. And this is not to say that “Utopias”, on a limited scale, cannot exist, because they can exist, and have, and continue to exist, but only in a very limited and specialized way. Any ideal can be realized, at least for a time, on a small enough scale. It's when we try to convert an entire nation, or continent, that we run into trouble – and regardless of the nobility of intent, these attempts are doomed to failure, if not totally then at least to a significant degree. Thus, we cannot, without pulling up the plant by its roots, “democratize” foreign cultures, and we are having an increasingly hard time democratizing our own culture (such as it is – “culture” implying something that is uniform and stable, which ours most definitely is not).

It can be argued – counterintuitively – that “democracy” and “diversity” are profoundly incompatible, and we see evidence for this on a daily basis. How can we “spread democracy” if we can't figure out how to make it work here? The answer is, we can't. So what we wind up spreading is not a political ideal, but an empire of hypocrisy and pretense. We can talk or coerce people in foreign lands into going through the motions – into putting on a show – but the result is something that we would never tolerate here... except even that is no longer the case. If democracy never “took hold” in any meaningful way in most of the world, despite our best efforts, the real tragedy is that if it ever took hold here, it's been sufficiently compromised and corrupted that it, for all intents and purposes, no longer exists. An ideal which had its day in the sun has become an illusion, and yet we cling (that word again!) to the language, and the rituals, and the structures, as if it still functions in any sort of meaningful way. (Perhaps living with illusions is preferable to facing reality. Certainly most people have already chosen which way to go, even if unconsciously.)

And this is the true tragedy of America. We were, and are, an “ideational” nation, but those ideas have become compromised, co-opted, and shopworn over time almost to the point where they may as well never have existed at all, except as faded writing on brittle parchment in dusty libraries. And one reason – the main one, perhaps – is that ideas and culture have very little to do with each other. Ideas are abstractions, whereas culture is real. Culture persists even in the worst of times, whereas ideas can come and go, and can ultimately be blown away like chaff, not that they might never reappear in a new and often distorted and inferior form. This is what we are facing now, in these times – when power, that age-old fact of life in the affairs of men, has become so predominant and so overwhelming that ideas, and ideals, wilt under a scorching sun.

You may have noticed that nowhere in this discussion have I dwelt at any length on the subject of politics, political parties, or Donald Trump and his administration and its opponents. That's because these are all superficial, symptomatic, and epiphemonenal. Our current crop of politicians and “leaders”, as well as their facilitators and opponents in the larger culture, may feel that they're making history, but the fact is that they are history, and a relatively trivial part of it at that. They are like a man riding a raging bull or a large whale, imagining that they are in charge, whereas they are, if anything, victims of historical forces that are totally out of their control. Even the people who really are in charge – whoever they are and wherever they may be – are part of history. It can be said that, for the last century at least, America has been in the driver's seat – but the same can just as readily be said of Russia (at least in the Soviet era). It's all in the point of view. In the global pecking order, it seems that the E.U., despite all of its problems, has an edge over the U.S. But in the meantime, China is on the move and Russia (post-Soviet) is watching and waiting. And then you have the rise of Muslim militancy, and mass migrations from the “third world” into the “first world”. So there are “top-down” factors in play, and “bottom-up” factors in play as well. And make no mistake, the “first world” is trying its best to cope with grass-roots uprisings elsewhere on the planet, but it may turn out, after all, that demographics really is destiny... that sheer numbers of humanity can conquer the global elites, at least in some respects. Empires have fallen over the course of millennia, but human migration seems to be a constant, and to be pretty much irresistible.

And if the American Empire, and the E.U., are a force for globalism and deracination, the mass movement of people is the opposite – it's a movement for, once again, identity – race, ethnicity, religion. The leading edge of all this in our time is, of course, Islam – and nothing can be less deracinated than a mass movement of people who share one religion (despite the conflicts within the Islamic world) which serves as a unifying factor for ethnic, linguistic, and even racial groups. The empires of our time have no answer for this – not us, not the E.U., not Russia, not even China (although they are doing their best).

Historical ironies abound, of course. The Ottoman Empire came to a bitter end as a result of World War I, and much of its territory was turned into colonies by the European powers. So Islam became a sleeping giant for a time, until much of it threw off the colonial powers, and in short order it was even more fully awakened by the establishment of the State of Israel (a creation of those same colonial powers). Everything we now see happening in the Islamic world (and its extensions into Europe and the U.S.) can be traced to either a reaction against colonialism (or its extension, namely economic colonialism) or a reaction against Israel. Islam has a new lease on life – a new energy – a new determination – a new mission. And by comparison, our shopworn democracy cannot compete in the marketplace of ideas, but is driven to brute force... and the E.U. simply dithers. They fume and bluster about resurgent “nationalism” in Eastern Europe (and in the U.S.) but what do they have to offer as an alternative? Submission to a bunch of boring guys in horn-rimmed glasses and baggy suits with bad haircuts in Brussels? Please. And what energizes Islam is not only religion per se, but that it's an international movement – not unlike, guess what, communism. So if there's a new Cold War being fought, it's between, as before, two international movements – “democracy”, which means globalism, and Islam. And, by the way, between secularism and religion. And the history of secularism is relatively short – I'll trace it to the French Revolution – whereas the history of religion, basically, goes back to pre-history. So which one has proven to be more durable? This is something that should worry the globalists (both here and elsewhere).

20+ for 2020 (and still counting)

Why are there so many declared Democratic candidates for president, with a year and a half until the 2020 election? One obvious answer is the generation gap – the Democratic establishment or old guard, AKA old white guys, vs. the wildly diverse Young Turks, who are, besides not being senior citizens, also arguably somewhat to the left of the old timers (though not enough to make a difference for any genuinely conservative voter). But that doesn't explain the sheer numbers, and the number of them who are not just grass-roots, but, basically, unknown, having either never having held elective office or having, at best, been at one time a member of some small-town water and sewage board.

In any country where, as it used to be said, “any boy born in a log cabin can grow up to be president of the United States” – and one has to substitute “girl or someone of indeterminate or undeclared gender” for “boy”, even if we leave the log cabin part in just for old times' sake – although “trailer” might be more apropos to the present day... it seems that people are starting to really take it seriously, as in: “If anyone can be president, then that includes me!” The impossible dream is no longer impossible, nor is it a dream – although, to look at some of these candidates, it might turn out to be a nightmare for everyone else.

But that's not enough to explain the 20+. It has to be based on the premise – held by everyone in the Democratic party, candidate or not – that anyone can beat Trump. Anyone! You wouldn't even have to be human! A yellow dog could do it! A cockroach! An amoeba! An inanimate object like Jeb Bush! So... with this premise, that being nominated by the Democratic Party is equivalent to being elected president, everyone with time on their hands is jumping into the race, because, well, what have they got to lose? Even if some other Democrat is nominated, at least a Democrat will still win... and maybe the sheer force of all those candidates will, in some way, help to insure success (image of countless sperm cells besieging an egg cell – one of them has to succeed, and the others ought to be glad to help out, and if they aren't, well, they just have a bad attitude, that's all).

But oh boy, here we go again with the “inevitability” thing. Can memories possibly be so short? A mere three years ago, Hillary was already picking out water-repellent wallpaper for Bill's White House playroom, not only assured of the nomination but also assured of victory in November. Bernie Sanders thought he was a contender, but the fix was in. And meanwhile, Donald Trump was already starting to knock off other Republican hopefuls like tenpins (except that tenpins generally have more sense).

The great thing about our political system is... no, it's not what you think, or what most people think. It's the White House. I mean, when leaders in many foreign countries take office, it's still kind of ambiguous, like, what do they really do (the term “ceremonial” comes up quite often)? And how much power do they really have, where do they live, how readily can they be thrown out of office, how do your pronounce their name, etc. It all seems so tentative, in a sense... so fragile... so ephemeral. But in our country the winner gets to move into the White House! They, and no one else save spouse and minor children. Everyone else has to come begging “around the back”. The president gets the limo, and the helicopter, and Air Force One, and “Hail to the Chief”, and all the things fit for a king – because he is, in many ways, a king – elected, yes, but the beneficiary of an immediate windfall of power and privilege that monarchs of old could only have dreamed of. European royalty are mere birds in gilded cages by comparison. Why, the president of the United States can start a war single-handedly, at any time and in any place! It happens all the time. I call that real power. (The main reason European countries no longer start wars is they've forgotten how. It has nothing to do with the E.U., NATO, or the U.N.)

But if the White House is more than symbolic, it can also become a prison, as it clearly did in Tricky Dick's case toward the end... and as it keeps promising to do in Trump's case, except that he's no Tricky Dick. He doesn't make mealy-mouthed excuses while hunkered down behind his desk in the Oval Office; he stands up in broad daylight and shouts defiance at the opposition on a regular basis. And this, of course, just drives them to new heights of hysteria – as intended. He plays them like a Stradivarius, as the saying goes, and they fall for it every time. It's a beautiful thing.

Which is, of course, still another reason why everyone from the assistant dogcatcher in Ash Flat, Arkansas on up thinks they're more qualified to be president than Trump, and why they're all running, or intending to, or seriously thinking about it. It could get to the point where there are so many Democratic candidates that they each wind up with one vote, which is the one they cast for themselves. (Try that out on the Electoral College!)

But getting back to inevitability – in 2016 it was Trump, and his campaign promises, vs. Hillary, and her promise to have the third Obama term. And Trump had no help – not from the Republicans, and certainly not from the mainstream media, who were all working for Hillary along with Hollywood, late-night TV, social media, and Obama's Department of Justice, FBI, and CIA. I mean... you'd think with that sort of playing field Trump would have made out about as well as George McGovern did in 1972. And yet, the “deplorables” turned out in numbers much greater than anyone (maybe even Trump himself) could have imagined, and the Electoral College did its usual quaint thing by awarding the victory to Trump even though he fell short in the popular vote (still another energizing factor behind today's Democratic candidate frenzy). (One theory is that the Democratic strategists only counted residents of trailer parks, figuring that anyone who actually lived in a house would never vote for Trump.)

But here we are confronted with an enduring mystery. Let's assume, for the moment, that the Mueller investigation didn't find any Russia “collusion” because there wasn't any, and that Russian “interference” can't be proven to have changed a single vote. Of course, the shadow of suspicion has now fallen on the formerly-sainted Robert Mueller & Co. now that they've failed to live up to expectations; “Say it ain't so, Bob!” But in any case, when you consider... and, by the way, even if the Russians decided that hacking our election in 2016 was too much trouble, the 2018 election showed that elections can, in fact, be hacked, despite protestations from the likes of Barack Obama (that was before the 2016 election, note) – at least at the grass-roots level. Can you say “Orange County, California”, or “Broward County, Florida”?  All it takes is a handful of operatives in key election precincts; who was it who said, “The people who cast the votes don't decide an election, the people who count the votes do.” Oh, right – Joseph Stalin. But the key is to have “boots on the ground”; if it can't be done via the Internet, it has to be a labor-intensive local operation. This tends to favor what we might call “professional political operatives” (formerly known as ward heelers)... and guess which party can claim the bulk of these. Enough said!

And yet... and yet!... Trump won. And this is what has the opposition in a state of continuing meltdown; it's like a nightmare from which one cannot awaken. Because, when one considers all of the above, it's impossible. Not improbable, but impossible... unless! Unless, for some deep, darkly mysterious reason, “somebody” didn't want Hillary to win, and/or did want Trump to win. And that “somebody” (or those “somebodies”) had the ability to make it happen. And no, “Russia” is not the answer, because they were helping, or attempting to help, both sides in 2016, supposedly to sow chaos and disorder (and if that was their aim, then “mission accomplished”!).

But wait! Maybe that is the answer. Because who would benefit the most from the utter political and social chaos which has overtaken the U.S. since Trump declared his candidacy, and which has only gotten worse since he took office? To put it another way, who benefits when Americans are distracted, demoralized, bogged down with politics, fighting the culture war full-time, and – in many cases – subject to hysteria and near-psychosis? Why, our enemies, of course – which, in our time, means economic rivals most of all, but also political (on the global level) and military rivals.

Here's where it gets a bit more complicated. If we're talking about military rivals, it's pretty clear that the main contenders are Russia and China, with North Korea as a sidebar (because without China they are nothing). Economic rivals? China, of course... but we also have an uneasy relationship with Canada and Mexico (still NAFTA partners) as well as the European Union and other countries that are, in most other contexts, considered allies. (We're unlikely to run into a trade deficit problem with the Central African Republic very soon.) The thing is, with the massive economic interlinkages that characterize the world economy, it can be argued that “no country is an island”, and that what hurts one hurts all to some extent. (Prime example – a serious economic crisis in the U.S. is going to make China and some other countries wonder if holding on to more than one-third of our national debt is a good idea. Of course, dumping it all at once could be considered an act of war – and it would be, in a way. So they're stuck holding our debt, and we're stuck with them holding it, since it's never going to be “paid”, nor was it ever intended to be.)

Then how about political rivals? The most obvious are globalists of every stripe, but this includes plenty of entities right here in the U.S., not the least of which is much of Congress and the “deep state”, not to mention multi-national corporations. So am I saying that a large chunk of the government and other economic players are actually opposed to our national interest as a sovereign nation, in the long run? Yes. This is not to say they are “anti-American” exactly (at least they don't consciously think of themselves that way), but that they don't value the U.S. as a sovereign nation with the right to make its own economic and diplomatic decisions without having to grovel and beg permission from one or more international organizations. (Wouldn't you love to know who members of Congress have on speed dial – other than D.C. call girls, of course.) And if you don't think that uncontrolled “immigration” is an economic/political attack by the globalists, you haven't been paying attention. (This is the case in Europe as well.)

Those with globalist inclinations would much rather we be just one of many – nothing special, no big deal. Kumbaya and all that. And the more radical elements firmly believe that it's time for America to get its comeuppance – and whatever form this takes is OK, and they will be glad to help the process. Please note that this is the present-day version of the wreck of the European colonial powers after World War II (or World War I in Germany's case). But they were replaced by economic colonialists, and the result has been much worse for the victims than old-fashioned colonialism ever was (with the possible exception of the Belgian Congo).

And the current debate over “nationalism” exemplifies this – is “nationalism” the same as “fascism”, for example? The opposition says it is. Which means, by simple logical inference, that it's the same as “hate”, and racism, sexism, homophobia, etc. etc. – you know the litany by now. The point being, while nationalism may be considered good for the country (although I would argue that old-fashioned patriotism is preferable), it is bad for the “world community” – which is why some formerly Iron Curtain countries are coming under so much criticism for reasserting their national (ethnic, religious) identity. (The fact that their captivity by the Soviet Empire is still so fresh in their minds might have something to do with it. Why trade one form of servitude for another? Is George Soros really preferable to Joseph Stalin? I suspect not.)

So the strategy, if you're a globalist puppeteer, is a delicate one – preserve the U.S. sufficiently to maintain us as the world's policeman (on behalf of the global elite) but suppress national pride and loyalty in all other respects, even if it saps morale. Which, I guess, is the modern version of the way the colonies of the European powers used to be tapped for “troops” who were sent to do the bidding of the colonials, not for any sort of benefit of their own country. And any sorts of stirrings (“the natives are getting restless”) were ruthlessly suppressed, the way stirrings of nationalism in the U.S. are instantly condemned by the opposition and its lackeys. One thing for certain – since Trump declared himself a nationalist, that term has fallen to the same level of disrepute as “fascist” or “Nazi”. So no matter what the term means (and it means many things to many people), it is suddenly forbidden to be used favorably in polite company (which, obviously, includes any E.U. confab).

It's like some sort of global cat-and-mouse game – keep America sick (but not on life support – more like a low-grade infection), demoralized, dependent, on the defensive, and subjugated on the one hand, but strong enough to provide a market based on consumer “needs”, and military muscle, on the other hand. Which means, by the way, that our so-called “world dominance” – our post-Cold War status as “the” superpower – is an illusion. We are much more like a dim-witted, stumbling giant controlled by unseen powers... and may, much sooner than anyone would like, become not much more than a beached whale, which is harvested for consumables while the skeleton is left to bleach in the sun. Of course, the global elite don't think much about sustainability, i.e. how long this situation can be maintained; that's someone else's problem, the way whoever let the Roman Empire slip away figured, well, how bad can it get in my own lifetime?

Imagine, if you will, a world without America. Poof, overnight, no USA at all, just a big vacant lot where we now stand – or, better still, a new sea caused by rising water levels due to global warming. The anti-America crowd would celebrate, no doubt – but Europe, and even China, might not be so sure. Israel would shit a brick. Russia, on the other hand, would consider it a golden opportunity. And for the global elite, well... they've been there before, and they always have another plan. But that's way down the road, if ever; how often do these “think tank” scenarios ever actually come to pass? Very seldom, thankfully. (Every day that goes by when most of us are still alive disproves the theories of another gaggle of “experts”. We have avoided utter annihilation at least a half dozen times since the 1960s.)

But – what about the Muslims? Have I forgotten about them? And if they are truly enemies and not just boogeymen, in what sense is this true? They have to be considered military enemies, since we find ourselves fighting them all across Africa and Asia, including in countries no American citizen has ever heard of (but even in those places, we're still fighting for “the American way of life”, don't forget that). But military rivals? A true threat in the military sense? Not so much. Our wars against Islam tend to be medium-tech for us and low-tech for them. If they fought the way we do, they wouldn't have a prayer – but when they fight their way (shades of the Viet Cong) they can do considerable damage.

So... is the Islamic world an economic rival? Hardly, unless you include the antics of the “oil-rich sheikhs”, and even their power is threatened by our increased domestic production of natural gas and oil.

OK then, what about politics, which means world politics in the case of Islam? As always, it's a matter not only of power and influence, but of “winning hearts and minds” (you know, that thing that we so spectacularly failed at in Vietnam). Islam is, at this point in world history, pretty much the only thing that can be described as “inspiring”, in the sense that it gets people excited, wins converts, and causes people to do radical and drastic things in the name of jihad – up to and including suicide bombing. Can anything comparable be said of Christianity, or of Judaism? Or of political systems like communism, fascism, capitalism, socialism, etc.? Yes, those have adherents, but many of these have ulterior motives, and just try and find a “true believer” who is willing to lay it all on the line as did the Bolsheviks and Maoists of old. Most of the world, and especially the “Western world”, is largely populated by jaded cynics who are content with eating, drinking, and making merry. And this, as much as anything, helps to explain the Islamic tidal wave that is taking over much of Europe (and making inroads here and there in the U.S.). It turns out that faith and demographics can win out over any amount of technology, sophistication, and even tradition if it's not defended properly. Power centers in Europe at this point are either the fortresses of the ruling elite or the Islamic neighborhoods operating under sharia law; everyone else is caught in the middle and feeling helpless because they are, in fact, helpless.

But, as with solving a crime, you need to define means, motive, and opportunity. Our enemies have a complex mixture of motives, best exemplified by the globalist dilemma described above. The means are primarily military at this point, in the sense of threats and of the renewed arms race, which can also be seen as a technology race. But economic and diplomatic means are another matter, and they are being applied with due diligence, along with a steady stream of propaganda directed at the American public in order to convince them that “nationalism” is bad and Trump is worse, and that their only hope is to get rid of both and return to the open arms of the “international community” (in order to be exploited all the more). Consider that Hillary, and all of Trump's rivals for the 2016 nomination with the exception of Rand Paul, were, and remain, hard-core globalists, and you can see how uneven the power relationship is. And Trump himself seems ambivalent about globalism; he opposes it in some ways but embraces it in others, but clearly not enough to satisfy the hard core.

But again, how to define the threat Islam represents? If not military in the sense of absolute power, then what? Diplomatically, the world seems pretty much divided between Islam and non-Islam, with us and our so-called allies all on the non-Islam side. That should make things simple – as simple as the comfortably black-and-white world of the Cold War. And yet, we find ourselves “engaging”, to a greater or lesser degree, with much of the Islamic world, for military reasons above all, but also for diplomatic reasons, and economic as well (if you include oil). The only Islamic country that is considered a hard-core enemy is Iran (thanks largely to Jimmy Carter's titanic blundering), and yet every time we approach the brink of going in and teaching them a damn good lesson, we shrink back for some reason. Could it be that we really did learn a lesson of our own in Afghanistan and Iraq? One can only hope. (Of course, a standoff is a good way to keep the pot bubbling; a back burner is better than no burner at all. And if perpetual war is our goal, it makes sense to be at knife points with as many other countries or other entities as possible.)

The main impact of our ongoing struggles with Islam are, clearly, economic – and, to be more precise, economic in the sense of transferring wealth from the productive sector to the non-productive sector, i.e. war. But while that sector is non-productive, it is certainly not unprofitable, and this is a key factor in explaining why we persist in what appears to be a fool's mission. We forget that while the Cold War, for example, could be defended as a stand against communism, it also provided a rich source of funding for the war industries – not as much as an actual “hot” war, but enough to sustain them at a high level for many decades. The end of the Cold War may have been considered, by the average citizen, to be a good thing, but to the great “military-industrial complex” it was a disaster, and something had to be done, and fast! Enter the War on Islam (not an official term, but a better descriptor than all the official ones combined – especially the ones that include the word “freedom”).

In any case, the War on Islam is a major hemorrhage – a sucking chest wound – on our economy in general. Even if it does benefit the few, it harms the many. (This is true both domestically and at the global level.) And it is, in fact, impacting our economy severely enough to hasten our demise. So, it is shortsightedness, or part of an actual plan? Get us involved in endless wars which will only end when we are no longer able to wage them? Hard to say, and I think both factors are in play. And Congress, and the vast bulk of politicians, are mere tools in all of this; they aren't in on the plan, and there is no reason to let them in on it. So they have to be won over by a combination of threats and bribery, and probably some measure of pathetic and delusional “patriotism” (as opposed to the real thing, which, unlike most members of Congress, has red blood and functioning reproductive organs).

So... to finally get back to Trump vs. the Peanut Gallery – or, not quite yet. We should think a bit about what all of this meant, or may have meant, when it came to the 2016 election. The impossible candidate won, and the inevitable candidate lost – and no, it wasn't just about that silly old Electoral College. But was it only about the 63 million “deplorables”? (And that, by the way, is a lot of people – not quite a fifth of the total population at the time, but still quite a few for the Democrats to completely write off, not only in 2016 but potentially for a generation.) True enough, they came out of the woodwork to vote for Trump, and they came out in the right places to swing the electoral vote, but... again, with the forces arrayed against Trump, I still can't imagine how he won – or how he expects to win in 2020 by hanging on – oops, I mean “clinging” – to those same 63 million.

One way of summarizing the perennial “conspiracy” issue is this: Either you believe that there are unseen forces at work, or you don't. And as I've pointed out before, everyone is, on some level and perhaps only in the most trivial of cases, a “conspiracy theorist” (when people talk about socks that never reappear once they're put into the dryer, they're only half joking). And on the opposite end (psychologically at least) there are people who believe that everything is a conspiracy, and that the CIA spends every waking moment keeping track of their dull, boring lives. (This is also known as grandiose thinking, but is far from the only way it can come about.)

Thus, the natural response to Trump's not only unlikely but impossible victory in 2016 was that over half the citizenry turned, overnight, into conspiracy theorists, including those who had, up to that point, been perfectly satisfied with outward appearances and with the establishment's “narrative” about pretty much everything. So they began groping around, desperately, seeking an explanation, the way law enforcement officials are always looking for a “motive” when it comes to shootings. And sometimes there isn't one – sometimes things really do just happen. But this cannot possibly be in the case for 2016 – surely randomness is far too weak an explanation... no explanation at all, in fact, although it seems to satisfy those very same people whenever they are talking about evolution, which is a much bigger and more important phenomenon than American elections.

But if 2016 cannot be explained in any sort of reasonable way, what does this say about 2020 and everyone's expectations? Will it be a “normal” election (in which case Trump should lose in a landslide), or will it be another spectacular anomaly, the way 2016 was? This is what is, or should be, keeping the 20-plus new-and-old kids on the block awake at night. And if the sum total of our enemies, for any reason, want to continue to assault us – culturally, diplomatically, economically – what outcome will they prefer? What feeds more readily and efficiently into their agenda? The American public, once the very image of naive optimism and confidence, has had its dreams and delusions shattered, maybe once and for all, by the results of the 2016 election and by ensuing events, regardless of what “side” any given individual was on. Everyone is scandalized... everyone is disillusioned... everyone is dismayed, for many reasons... and everyone is “out on the street”, either literally or in spirit, gearing up for still another “mother of all battles” next year. So if the ruling elite at one time felt that an anesthetized American public was their best strategy, that has obviously been discarded in favor of something much more violent and stress-prone... which may mean that we have come to a moment of truth for our nation and society, the way so many other societies have come to a moment of truth, almost always unexpectedly (which makes it even more traumatic). It may be time to be either openly enslaved or equally openly discarded – and quite frankly, whoever winds up running in 2020, and however the citizens vote, is not going to make a bit of difference if the die is already cast. Trump, and the 20+ (or whatever the final figure is) may as well just be chaff in the wind if America's fate is sealed.