Substitute "the National Security State" for the "left", "Democrats", and "communists", and you have a point. It's the National Security State seeking absolute power which in a lot of ways they already have. Our political process is a fake and a distraction, at root, the two parties do not oppose each other, they work for their corporate owners, just as the National Security State does. And the DC-based "right" and "left" are the same, they have the same owners/donors. The NSS through its propaganda arm - media, both social and legacy - is very effective at dividing the country so that the true opponent to the Constitution gets away scot free every time. And Trump may be the standard bearer for the people on the right, as RFK Jr may be for the people on the left, but Trump was severely compromised from the outset, which explains his raft of insubordinate and openly disloyal appointees - and. of late, lawyers. Perhaps ways will be found to compromise Kennedy, but I doubt that he will get nominated, because it's up to the DNC to pick their candidates (as it is for the RNC), the primaries serving the role of increasing voter engagement and name recognition, as the court in Sanders et al vs DNC held. Perhaps Trump will play the role of Navalny to whoever-it-is playing the role of Putin, but the political process has been compromised for a long time and now it's just more meaningless agitprop.
Where I resisted the use of the NSS for the left or communists, is that people are in contact with these communists at every level of government, in their schools, etc and are more likely to recognize it on that level and even where in my red county with relatively reliable voter base, they exist in county government at the pinnacles of power. That's important, because some issues are strictly local like county health officials who proposed the lockdowns and mask mandates in these same red counties. That would have been rejected by people who truly understand the principles behind the Bill of Rights and such.
But you make very salient and important points to be recognized.
Here's an excerpt from a very long article by a self-described revolutionary Marxist - you can't get any more Left than him: "A long report by Ryan Grim in the Intercept last June showed how the nation’s liberal and progressive nonprofit/NGO sector had over recent years become so crippled by constant, self-cancelling identitarian “call-outs” and cultural wars as to be incapable of meaningful activism on their issues: abortion rights, civil liberties, livable ecology, and more. By Grim’s grim account:
“[An NGO] leader said the strife has become so destructive that it feels like an op. ‘I’m not saying it’s a right-wing plot, because we are incredibly good at doing ourselves in, but — if you tried — you couldn’t conceive of a better right-wing plot to paralyze progressive leaders by catalyzing the existing culture where internal turmoil and microcampaigns are mistaken for strategic advancement of social impact for the millions of people depending on these organizations to stave off the crushing injustices coming our way,’ said another longtime organization head. ‘Progressive leaders cannot do anything but fight inside the orgs, thereby rendering the orgs completely toothless for the external battles in play. … Everyone is scared, and fear creates the inaction that the right wing needs to succeed in cementing a deeply unpopular agenda.’” (emphasis added). ... Left wokesters are often played by bourgeois electoral identity politics. They get all too easily co-opted into the US major capitalist party candidate-centered election madness and all too easily soothed by the narcotic of incremental reformism (parliamentary cretinism) by the strategic placement of bourgeois non-white, female, and gay “faces in high places” – elite politicos who help the nation’s predominantly white and male ruling class deceptively re-brand their capitalist-imperialist order as “diverse,” “tolerant,” and “multi-cultural.” Barack Obama (Black with a Muslim-sounding name), Hillary Clinton (female), Kamala Harris (Black and female), Pete Buttigieg (gay), Nancy Pelosi (female), and Tammy Baldwin (female and gay) are some of the neoliberal figures left identitarians have been excessively prone to applaud simply because of their race, gender, or sexual orientation. It’s sad to watch left-identified people recurrently grant support to ruling class politicians and officials on the basis of the politicos’ skin color, gender, and/or sexual identity (as well as their partisan/Democratic status). Pelosi, Butiggieg, Harris, Obama, Amy Klobuchar, and a vast swath of non-male, nonwhite and (in some cases) non-straight Democratic “leaders” are dedicated agents of and believers in the system that is literally ending life on Earth: capitalism-imperialism." https://www.counterpunch.org/2023/06/09/the-lame-left-eight-afflictions/
In this piece, substitute "National Security State" for "right wing" and "revanchist" and similar terms and you might see what I'm getting at, the NSS is very effective at getting Left to fight the Right, and vice versa - when it opposes the American people as a whole regardless of ideology or affiliation. The NSS finds both sides useful, but has its own goals.
Mind you, I don't agree with Street's politics, Marx's highly centralized solution to the problem of globalist WEF-style capitalism - statist tyranny - is something I very strongly oppose. But the best way to find out how real Communists think is to read their commentary and analysis...
Excellent post as always T.L. In particular, your statement in paragraph 3 regarding the left, “...they don’t suffer from the paralyzing fear of acting that the right does”, perfectly describes what I believe to be the singular cause of failure for the political right. I can’t recall where I read it, but someone from /our side/ was asked about this very phenomenon. The explanation given was we have become so obsessed with being “right”, as in correct, about every little detail on any given subject, it has rendered us completely ineffectual. We worry if the curtains match the couch while the communists are burning the house down. The perfect becomes the enemy of the good, paralysis through analysis, call it what you will, nothing gets done out of fear of being wrong and called out over some trivial minutia that doesn't matter big picture.
In other words, if I need to dig a hole in the back yard, I don’t need to know the exact date the modern shovel was invented or who invented it. I don’t need to know the metallurgical process or individual compounds used to form the blade. I don’t need to know the pros and cons of a wooden handle versus fiberglass over a ten-year study period. I just need to start digging the damn hole.
I had an experience when we were building a drilling rig and we had to get a big plate of steel in under the floor in the substructure and everyone was arguing about if it would fit or not or what we could do to make sure. I had enough after a few minutes of that and said something that has come back to me time and again, I said "Well, back the truck up and we'll go from there." since then, like you with "dig the damn hole" debating will never replace action.
It is my belief that communists are really not in search of a problem to solve. They are schemers who know in advance the results they want from the solutions to a problem or problems that they themselves engineer. I personally believe that the solution to all this mess is actually simple. Nullification at the state level and non-compliance at the citizen level. Those communist cretins and the control apparatus they have built for themselves would chug to a halt. We the People must become ungovernable. It is within our power, with God's Grace, to starve them out. If people really knew how small a number of the bad actors that are pulling all the strings, they would be more encouraged to do as I mentioned. To do nothing is helping forge our own chains. To take the other extreme of a kinetic civil war will not only result in millions of deaths with no certainty of victory, but could invite an opportune foreign invasion while we are killing each other. As I often read elsewhere, we can't vote our way out of Clown World.
Substitute "the National Security State" for the "left", "Democrats", and "communists", and you have a point. It's the National Security State seeking absolute power which in a lot of ways they already have. Our political process is a fake and a distraction, at root, the two parties do not oppose each other, they work for their corporate owners, just as the National Security State does. And the DC-based "right" and "left" are the same, they have the same owners/donors. The NSS through its propaganda arm - media, both social and legacy - is very effective at dividing the country so that the true opponent to the Constitution gets away scot free every time. And Trump may be the standard bearer for the people on the right, as RFK Jr may be for the people on the left, but Trump was severely compromised from the outset, which explains his raft of insubordinate and openly disloyal appointees - and. of late, lawyers. Perhaps ways will be found to compromise Kennedy, but I doubt that he will get nominated, because it's up to the DNC to pick their candidates (as it is for the RNC), the primaries serving the role of increasing voter engagement and name recognition, as the court in Sanders et al vs DNC held. Perhaps Trump will play the role of Navalny to whoever-it-is playing the role of Putin, but the political process has been compromised for a long time and now it's just more meaningless agitprop.
Where I resisted the use of the NSS for the left or communists, is that people are in contact with these communists at every level of government, in their schools, etc and are more likely to recognize it on that level and even where in my red county with relatively reliable voter base, they exist in county government at the pinnacles of power. That's important, because some issues are strictly local like county health officials who proposed the lockdowns and mask mandates in these same red counties. That would have been rejected by people who truly understand the principles behind the Bill of Rights and such.
But you make very salient and important points to be recognized.
Here's an excerpt from a very long article by a self-described revolutionary Marxist - you can't get any more Left than him: "A long report by Ryan Grim in the Intercept last June showed how the nation’s liberal and progressive nonprofit/NGO sector had over recent years become so crippled by constant, self-cancelling identitarian “call-outs” and cultural wars as to be incapable of meaningful activism on their issues: abortion rights, civil liberties, livable ecology, and more. By Grim’s grim account:
“[An NGO] leader said the strife has become so destructive that it feels like an op. ‘I’m not saying it’s a right-wing plot, because we are incredibly good at doing ourselves in, but — if you tried — you couldn’t conceive of a better right-wing plot to paralyze progressive leaders by catalyzing the existing culture where internal turmoil and microcampaigns are mistaken for strategic advancement of social impact for the millions of people depending on these organizations to stave off the crushing injustices coming our way,’ said another longtime organization head. ‘Progressive leaders cannot do anything but fight inside the orgs, thereby rendering the orgs completely toothless for the external battles in play. … Everyone is scared, and fear creates the inaction that the right wing needs to succeed in cementing a deeply unpopular agenda.’” (emphasis added). ... Left wokesters are often played by bourgeois electoral identity politics. They get all too easily co-opted into the US major capitalist party candidate-centered election madness and all too easily soothed by the narcotic of incremental reformism (parliamentary cretinism) by the strategic placement of bourgeois non-white, female, and gay “faces in high places” – elite politicos who help the nation’s predominantly white and male ruling class deceptively re-brand their capitalist-imperialist order as “diverse,” “tolerant,” and “multi-cultural.” Barack Obama (Black with a Muslim-sounding name), Hillary Clinton (female), Kamala Harris (Black and female), Pete Buttigieg (gay), Nancy Pelosi (female), and Tammy Baldwin (female and gay) are some of the neoliberal figures left identitarians have been excessively prone to applaud simply because of their race, gender, or sexual orientation. It’s sad to watch left-identified people recurrently grant support to ruling class politicians and officials on the basis of the politicos’ skin color, gender, and/or sexual identity (as well as their partisan/Democratic status). Pelosi, Butiggieg, Harris, Obama, Amy Klobuchar, and a vast swath of non-male, nonwhite and (in some cases) non-straight Democratic “leaders” are dedicated agents of and believers in the system that is literally ending life on Earth: capitalism-imperialism." https://www.counterpunch.org/2023/06/09/the-lame-left-eight-afflictions/
In this piece, substitute "National Security State" for "right wing" and "revanchist" and similar terms and you might see what I'm getting at, the NSS is very effective at getting Left to fight the Right, and vice versa - when it opposes the American people as a whole regardless of ideology or affiliation. The NSS finds both sides useful, but has its own goals.
Mind you, I don't agree with Street's politics, Marx's highly centralized solution to the problem of globalist WEF-style capitalism - statist tyranny - is something I very strongly oppose. But the best way to find out how real Communists think is to read their commentary and analysis...
People are obsessed with national politics and who will be elected in 2024.
The only hope we have is to use our collective power to influence local
politics. Schools are a start, should we disagree with the curriculum? Take
the children out of the system. We have some 3000 counties in the US. We can
work within our county. Once again when feeling hopeless, you have given a
clue to the clueless, as to how they can exercise their power in a manageable way.
So, thank you, I mostly feel better after reading your essays.
Excellent as usual.
Thank you, sir.
We're going to nice ourselves to death if we don't wake up.
I’m so sick of nice people! Lol!
I am, too, they are our millstones at this point.
THIS is one of your best articles! I love your writing and look forward to all your work! Thank you!
Thank you. It's only on the idea that I am of some service to the wider community that makes it all worth it. Your support is invaluable.
Excellent post as always T.L. In particular, your statement in paragraph 3 regarding the left, “...they don’t suffer from the paralyzing fear of acting that the right does”, perfectly describes what I believe to be the singular cause of failure for the political right. I can’t recall where I read it, but someone from /our side/ was asked about this very phenomenon. The explanation given was we have become so obsessed with being “right”, as in correct, about every little detail on any given subject, it has rendered us completely ineffectual. We worry if the curtains match the couch while the communists are burning the house down. The perfect becomes the enemy of the good, paralysis through analysis, call it what you will, nothing gets done out of fear of being wrong and called out over some trivial minutia that doesn't matter big picture.
In other words, if I need to dig a hole in the back yard, I don’t need to know the exact date the modern shovel was invented or who invented it. I don’t need to know the metallurgical process or individual compounds used to form the blade. I don’t need to know the pros and cons of a wooden handle versus fiberglass over a ten-year study period. I just need to start digging the damn hole.
I had an experience when we were building a drilling rig and we had to get a big plate of steel in under the floor in the substructure and everyone was arguing about if it would fit or not or what we could do to make sure. I had enough after a few minutes of that and said something that has come back to me time and again, I said "Well, back the truck up and we'll go from there." since then, like you with "dig the damn hole" debating will never replace action.
T.L.Davis,
100%, you have outlined the serious and deadly road to ruin we are now following.
The "elected officials" in DC and in the various blue states, only hail destruction and
are deplorable. Not in a basket, but in a fully loaded freight train. People are unlikely
to push back until they have nothing left to lose. Ideally Americans will realize that the
key to prosperity for all is for people/countries to cooperate and work toward peace.
I won't be placing any bets. We are coming out of a plandemic and it is only a matter
of time until we will be experiencing more assaults intended to cull the herd.
It is my belief that communists are really not in search of a problem to solve. They are schemers who know in advance the results they want from the solutions to a problem or problems that they themselves engineer. I personally believe that the solution to all this mess is actually simple. Nullification at the state level and non-compliance at the citizen level. Those communist cretins and the control apparatus they have built for themselves would chug to a halt. We the People must become ungovernable. It is within our power, with God's Grace, to starve them out. If people really knew how small a number of the bad actors that are pulling all the strings, they would be more encouraged to do as I mentioned. To do nothing is helping forge our own chains. To take the other extreme of a kinetic civil war will not only result in millions of deaths with no certainty of victory, but could invite an opportune foreign invasion while we are killing each other. As I often read elsewhere, we can't vote our way out of Clown World.