Mainstream conservatives are all bark and no bite, and the left knows it. They're not afraid of ruffling feathers because they know there will be no consequences for doing so. Since our leaders are unwilling to take action, it's up to us to fight back with fiscal and lifestyle choices.
Real power is patronage and the GOP has made it a top level ideological priority to reject the downward flow in patron/client relationships. Thus, they don't have any support outside of overly-ideological laity (us) and their industry donors.
They don't even throw the base red meat on social issues anymore, just castigate them for asking for anything at all.
It is a party meant to diffuse power, not accumulate it.
German historian Max Weber pointed out in his book The Russian Revolutions, that the Bolshevik Communists promised the Russian people a constitutional government in early 1900's but it ended up what he called a "Pseudo Constitutionism" due to three glaring intentional oversights:
1. It did not limit the "deep state" bureaucracies to create their own regulations outside the legislative bodies
2. It left open the question of budgeting so that the executive branch could start wars and more importantly fund wars unilaterally.
3. Most importantly, it exempted declarations of emergencies from the Constitutional limitations. So, what ends up is what we have in the US today; endless hoaxes legitimatizing emergencies, principally a public health emergency that ends up merely the annual flu.
Niccolo Machiavelli stated the "ends justify the means" but only in an emergency. The second part of that sentence is always left out. He further clarified that legitimate emergencies were limited to: preserving the intent of the founders and founding documents;
reforming and rooting out corruption;
driving out foreigners;
removing obstreperous elements.
Public health emergencies, proxy wars, critical race theories were not legitimate emergencies.
Your article is good, but each state must abolish or limit the capacity of a governor to declare an emergency unilaterally and the same with school boards shut downs. They must have short expiration dates, beefed up justifications, etc. I see very little effort in each state to demand that the public health emergency be declared over. Some governors are doing it on their own but their is not demand by the citizenry or by lawsuits. Republicans have to get their hands dirty to reverse the existing regime. Most of them only care about watching football on TV or golfing as long as their 401-k is not tampered with. Where is the pursuit to charge paid street rebels and vandals with racketeering crimes and banish their funders, with charging wealthy elites who fund pogroms to debase the culture with treason, etc??
Moreover, red state governments should be doing all they can to forge close ties with red state neighbors, particularly in economics, so they can weather the fiscal shock and awe unleashed by feds against any resistance.
That may be the Achilles heel of the state strategy. Even red states are addicted to Uncle Sugar's grants and handouts. State leaders depend on that cash to buy votes and dread losing it.
So, that's the second weakness of the strategy: poor state leadership.
Which leads me to a more cynical take. Yes, ultimately it will be counties and states that will have to lead, but that's not going to happen until some great crisis or collapse forces locals to act in their own self preservation.
So, good to plan, good to forge local networks etc...but implementation isnt happening until a collapse absent a miracle.
Red states are already cautiously moving into prepper mode. Texas and Utah have both established bullion depositories: facilities where precious metals can be stored safely. Tennessee, Mississippi, Missouri, Oklahoma and Wyoming are all considering setting up depositories or considering proposals to authorise precious metals as legal tender.
Red state elites are as unsentimental as rattlesnakes. But they do not intend to get dragged down by Clownworld. Washington abolished the rule of law in finance with the seizure of Russia's cash reserves and the similar seizure of the reserves of Afghanistan. Taken with the failure of the federal courts to offer relief from electoral fraud and the transparent collapse of the formal constitutional order it looks as if the states may well get their chance.
Interestingly, your misquote of Clausewitz (To (mis)quote Clausewitz, “Politics is a mere continuation of war by other means.”) is actually a whole part of Michel Foucault's book "Il faut défendre la société"...which is one of the cleverest hard-leftists books ever written
Mainstream conservatives are all bark and no bite, and the left knows it. They're not afraid of ruffling feathers because they know there will be no consequences for doing so. Since our leaders are unwilling to take action, it's up to us to fight back with fiscal and lifestyle choices.
Real power is patronage and the GOP has made it a top level ideological priority to reject the downward flow in patron/client relationships. Thus, they don't have any support outside of overly-ideological laity (us) and their industry donors.
They don't even throw the base red meat on social issues anymore, just castigate them for asking for anything at all.
It is a party meant to diffuse power, not accumulate it.
German historian Max Weber pointed out in his book The Russian Revolutions, that the Bolshevik Communists promised the Russian people a constitutional government in early 1900's but it ended up what he called a "Pseudo Constitutionism" due to three glaring intentional oversights:
1. It did not limit the "deep state" bureaucracies to create their own regulations outside the legislative bodies
2. It left open the question of budgeting so that the executive branch could start wars and more importantly fund wars unilaterally.
3. Most importantly, it exempted declarations of emergencies from the Constitutional limitations. So, what ends up is what we have in the US today; endless hoaxes legitimatizing emergencies, principally a public health emergency that ends up merely the annual flu.
Niccolo Machiavelli stated the "ends justify the means" but only in an emergency. The second part of that sentence is always left out. He further clarified that legitimate emergencies were limited to: preserving the intent of the founders and founding documents;
reforming and rooting out corruption;
driving out foreigners;
removing obstreperous elements.
Public health emergencies, proxy wars, critical race theories were not legitimate emergencies.
Your article is good, but each state must abolish or limit the capacity of a governor to declare an emergency unilaterally and the same with school boards shut downs. They must have short expiration dates, beefed up justifications, etc. I see very little effort in each state to demand that the public health emergency be declared over. Some governors are doing it on their own but their is not demand by the citizenry or by lawsuits. Republicans have to get their hands dirty to reverse the existing regime. Most of them only care about watching football on TV or golfing as long as their 401-k is not tampered with. Where is the pursuit to charge paid street rebels and vandals with racketeering crimes and banish their funders, with charging wealthy elites who fund pogroms to debase the culture with treason, etc??
Excellent.
Moreover, red state governments should be doing all they can to forge close ties with red state neighbors, particularly in economics, so they can weather the fiscal shock and awe unleashed by feds against any resistance.
That may be the Achilles heel of the state strategy. Even red states are addicted to Uncle Sugar's grants and handouts. State leaders depend on that cash to buy votes and dread losing it.
So, that's the second weakness of the strategy: poor state leadership.
Which leads me to a more cynical take. Yes, ultimately it will be counties and states that will have to lead, but that's not going to happen until some great crisis or collapse forces locals to act in their own self preservation.
So, good to plan, good to forge local networks etc...but implementation isnt happening until a collapse absent a miracle.
Red states are already cautiously moving into prepper mode. Texas and Utah have both established bullion depositories: facilities where precious metals can be stored safely. Tennessee, Mississippi, Missouri, Oklahoma and Wyoming are all considering setting up depositories or considering proposals to authorise precious metals as legal tender.
Red state elites are as unsentimental as rattlesnakes. But they do not intend to get dragged down by Clownworld. Washington abolished the rule of law in finance with the seizure of Russia's cash reserves and the similar seizure of the reserves of Afghanistan. Taken with the failure of the federal courts to offer relief from electoral fraud and the transparent collapse of the formal constitutional order it looks as if the states may well get their chance.
I can't upvote this enough.
In one word: sanity!
This is an exceptionally good summation of a strategy for survival. More of the same guarantees continued defeat.
Interestingly, your misquote of Clausewitz (To (mis)quote Clausewitz, “Politics is a mere continuation of war by other means.”) is actually a whole part of Michel Foucault's book "Il faut défendre la société"...which is one of the cleverest hard-leftists books ever written