If you’ve been reading my blogs for a while, you’ll know that I’m not really a big fan of democracy and all that. I don’t believe in representative forms of government, voting, elections, and the rest of the things that go along with these. However, I also hold to formalism as a principle, which means that I believe that if you have a system in place then you abide by that system until such a time as it is formally, or at least decisively changed. This is why, despite not believing in democracy, I still think elections should be done cleanly and fairly, among other applications of this principle.
Yet, despite my dislike and distrust for popular forms of government, I also believe that government should exist for the good of the people, regardless of the outward forms that it may take. I don’t believe there needs to be a role for the people to participate in political decision-making, but political decision-making ought to take the needs of the people into account, and the wise king is the one who treats his nation as his extended family to be cared for, not to be lorded over or looted. That government is good which maintains order and stability and the prosperity that this affords occurs because of stability, not political liberty.
So having said this, I would apply these same principles to political parties within a representative system. While the democratic basis of the existence of political parties, per se, is a bit spurious in my eyes, their existence as vehicles (ostensibly) for the representation of the programs and political goals of their constituent elements makes a great deal of sense. However, representative political systems are always going to engender opposing factions (which is why certain of our Founders vainly warned against them). The more broadly democratic the system is, the more divisive and virulent the strife between these factions will be.
Now, the Republican Party should represent the interests of Red Tribe, which is the great mass of “Chud-Americans” out there in the heartland, the ideological (and in many ways biological) successors of the founding stock of this country. Red Tribers are socially and politically to the Right and represent the real Americanism that made this country great. They are opposed by Blue Tribers, who are globalist in outlook and largely reject the traditional heritage of this country, thus essentially making them cultural foreigners occupying many places in this land (it’s also why they tend to appeal to most immigrant groups looking for handouts and other loot, who they take as clients).
For a long time - and let’s be honest here - the Republican Party has not faithfully represented its own voters. Since 2016, this has started to change, to the horror and consternation of most of our country’s political establishment. Trump’s vow to “Make America Great Again,” which was based off of promised fundamental changes to the Regime’s prevailing program in areas like trade policy, immigration, and energy production, rattled the Regime seriously enough to force it to nakedly defraud the 2020 election and then accelerate its “fundamental transformation” of American institutions across the board. Despite this, more and more candidates and elected officials in the Republican Party who are friendly to MAGA are appearing on the scene and forcing open an outlet for the political ambitions of the party’s core constituencies, regardless of the Regime’s best efforts to stop it.
What we see going on in the GOP is simply the appearance of the natural alignment of Party policy and officials with the Party’s own constituencies. The arrival of candidates like Blake Masters, J.D. Vance, Kari Lake, and others merely reflects the fact that the rank-and-file of the Party has been increasingly able to obtain representation for itself despite the best efforts of the establishment hacks who formerly had a lock on power within the Party. Contrary to years of concern trolling from lefties and fake righties, this is nothing that the Republican Party needs to be “saved” from. In a sense, it’s actually the democracy in action that they all profess to be so concerned about.
So the logical question is why hasn’t this happened before and why is there so much opposition to it now from within the “leadership” of the Republican Party itself? After all, MAGA is demonstrably a winning platform and broadly aligns with the beliefs and desires of the great mass of folks out there in middle America. On the basis of the principles of good government alone this agenda ought to be promoted, rather than hindered and naysayed, by the people leading the Party that is made up of these same middle Americans. Certainly, if the GOP got serious about providing leadership and full-throated implementation of common-sense America First policies, it would literally transform itself into an unstoppable force,
And again, per the principle of formalism, I would say that a political party ought to do whatever it can to win and thus advance the political power of its constituents. That is, after all, what it’s there for.
So why the opposition? Well, I think Mencius Moldbug’s observation that “America is a Communist Country” (AIACC) hits a lot closer to the target than many Americans would like to think. The current Regime that runs things in Washington (and this has been across parties for several decades, mind you) operates not much differently than the type of communist parties that held power all behind the Iron Curtain. That’s why the effective use of your constitutional rights is nullified via administrative fiat and public-private partnerships that enforce Regime diktat. It’s why you can be fired, debanked, and unpersoned for transgressing Regime political sensibilities. While not all of the exact forms are there, the essential function of suppressing dissent and codifying Party power that were found in the Soviet Union are in operation here.
Of course, the formal transition of the United States into a one-party state has not occurred yet. However, as observers for decades who have complained about the “Uniparty” have intuited, it’s becoming effectively so and this has accelerated just within the past couple of years. Only one party is tolerated in a full-blown communist state. Since we are transitioning to that, they still have to tolerate other parties, so the Regime strongly incentivise the leadership of the “other” parties to be controlled opposition, functionally creating a one-party system. While nominally pursuing their own political agendas (usually when they’re out of power and unable to actually do so), whenever a point of real danger to the Regime’s status quo arises, they will rally together with the Regime to suppress it. And that, in a nutshell, is why the GOP establishment is trying so desperately to stop MAGA. They have been coopted through various means and are doing the bidding of the Regime.
I like to refer to these types of Republicans as “suicide bomb Republicans” because of their tendency to worm their way into position “behind the lines” where they then try to do the most damage after they ignite themselves. Suicide bombers are a particularly despicable type of “fighter” since they won’t actually face an enemy in combat. They get behind the lines, making themselves look like anyone else in the civilian population, until they blow themselves up and do as much harm as possible to those same civilians who they despise.
So who are we talking about here? We’re talking about the Liz Cheneys and Adam Kinzingers and Evan McMullinses of the Republican Party. We’re talking about the “Republicans” who support and cooperate with the farcical J6 Committee. In earlier years, they were the folks who undermined MAGA’s earlier iteration, the Tea Party movement, by termiting candidates like Doug Hoffman in New York and Joe Miller in Alaska. They’re the folks whose commitment to democracy is so strong that they’ll subvert their own party’s nominees and undermine the will of the people as expressed via primary elections when it goes against their own.
People like Kinzinger and McMullin talk about “honour,” yet they have none. They talk about “democracy,” but undermine it at every turn. They are nothing but political clowns, acting out a piece of stagecraft assigned to them by the Regime. And in many cases, that’s as seriously as they need to be taken. After all, nobody really believes that Liz Cheney is going to make a dime’s worth of difference in the 2024 GOP primaries for “stopping” Donald Trump, even if they have to pretend to think she’ll be the Regime’s saviour riding in one her red, white, and blue horse. In these cases, the self-detonation is largely an annoying distraction - a couple of plate glass windows might get blown out, but otherwise nobody gets hurt.
However, in other cases, the suicide bomb Republican’s actions can cause great damage and even swing the course of elections or public policy decisions. For example, what to make of Mitch McConnell’s decision to pull ad spending from the New Hampshire senate race just weeks before Election Day? Here, Don Bolduc is challenging Sen. Maggie Hassan for her seat and the race is essentially a statistical tie, this should be an easily winnable race. This move by Yertle the Turtle’s super-PAC can only be seen as a deliberate effort to throw this race because the GOP establishment doesn’t like Bolduc for being “too far to the Right.” This same establishment has tried to throw basically every other race where a genuine Rightist is on the ballot - Masters’ race in Arizona, Vance’s race in Ohio, Laxalt’s race in Nevada, Mastriano’s race in Pennsylvania - the list goes on.
These people are perfectly willing to take a dive for the Regime if it means harming genuine conservatives and populists. This is because their true loyalty to is a transnational cabal, not to the people of the United States. These people cannot be considered patriotic Americans but are the enemy of the American nation. In nearly all cases, these people who are supposedly so concerned about “democracy” are trying to undermine the express wishes of their own party’s voters as expressed via primary elections. It should be pretty obvious to any reasonably intelligent person that the reasons expressed by these people are not really the reasons they act as they do. We should always remember that for the Regime and its lackies, “democracy” means “policies and sociocultural results that the Regime wants.” Democracy dies when people vote for the wrong party, and democracy lives when unpopular, minority position policies are forced onto the people at gunpoint.
What we’re seeing here is the last dying hurrah of the establishment Republicans, who are increasingly coming to face the fact that they either get out of the way of MAGA or they can join the Democrats. But while they undergo their death spasms, how are we to combat the damage they’re trying to do? The answer one often hears from our side is to just not vote - but isn’t that really kind of what these establishment types are wanting us to do? Not voting for the candidates they’re trying to undercut isn’t exactly punishing them, after all. Instead (and I feel kind of funny saying this), we vote for the candidates they’re trying to undermine and help to deliver a red wave election for a GOP which will then be “America First enriched,” so to speak. After all, to get power you have to use power. And voting is an exercise of power, however individually diluted. But it’s time - for as long as we’re saddled with a representative system of government - for middle America to formalise the role of the GOP as an actual opposition party, actually try to consistently win elections, and force the Regime to either back down or else accelerate itself into oblivion.
Another great post and very timely. The collapsing credibility of regime loyalists within the Right is proof that the current system is breaking down. The frauds that used to work no longer do. This exposes the system to danger: its nature is revealed, its legitimacy is further eroded and its ability to demobilise potential opposition shrinks. There is nothing to regret about any of this.
The emerging system, or the successor to the current regime, cannot expect to establish its legitimacy by way of elections. The fraudulent character of electoral politics was established by the ease with which the electoral process was rigged in 2020, as well as by the ease with which the regime intimidated the entire federal court system (which upheld the fraudulent outcome on procedural grounds). All of this compounds the spectacle of representatives who routinely neglect to advocate for their constituents (sometimes with a malicious enthusiasm for betrayal).
The mid-terms will test both the system and its victims/subjects. The nominal result may well be irrelevant. What is key is how the electorate respond to the instances of electoral fraud and how far the courts will go to legitimise those frauds.
Finally, Theophilus you need to further develop your thinking about the case for a paternalistic mode of governance. The current regime simultaneously claims to represent the people while using therapeutic and eudaimonic interventions to disempower, exploit and immiserate the people. The passivity and docility that are being created and normalised by this are creating precisely the sort of conditions for an enlightened despotism (using the expression in the value neutral sense that a despot is simply a lord).
Yes, excellent piece. Although i disagree, it's well done and thought provoking.
My chief criticism is that we don't inhabit a democracy nor a representative republic in any, actual sense. These are illusions contrived (like the Matrix) to keep all western peoples as docile cogs in the rulers' wheel.
The reality we inhabit is better viewed as a criminal cartel of sorts. A gang of corruptocrats comprised of many factions and families loosely affiliated in their overarching Racket-- stealing the wealth and soul of the people.
As such, it is fantasy to believe that a criminal Cartel can be voted out-- or that Americans can improve their lot by voting in the right kind of criminals or even mirabile dictu! Honest people who will go to dc to battle the crooks.
Ridiculous.
Let's imagine our country as a small city. It has been infested with a malevolent and ruthless criminal gang. Over the years the crooks gained control over every lever of power, doling out favors to some, carving up the city resources amongst themselves, intimidating or killing any who resisted. "Go ahead!" they say,"have your elections. Have your candidates if you don't like the ones we give you. We don't mind because at the end of the day, anyone you send to city hall belongs to us, not you. They will take orders and get rich or they will be ousted. We hold the guns, the police, the courts, the news outlets, and the banks. So elect away, suckers!"
It really is that bad. Our refusal to face this is just more evidence of our impotence and capacity for self delusion. In the real world the only way to free the city from bloody criminals is to wipe them out. (Actually, the alternative is that the criminals exhaust every resource and impoverish everyone to such a degree that they move on to new territory but that's a fate perhaps worse than death for citizens).
In the meantime the interweb is full of posts and memes and vids of people excited about an election and dreaming about how things will improve. But the Oligarchs won't cede power without a bloody fight. Elect 535 raving MAGA zealots to Congress and they will smack head first into the raw power of a criminal enterprise willing to coerce and cow anyone who challenges them.