I just read “How President Trump Can Use Political Pressure to Defeat the witchHunt” (Josiah Lippincott) on American Greatness.
And I realized I’ve been enjoying a kind of personal “Summer of 1914”, an interval perceived as a halcyon period preceding the First World War, particularly in England. (Yes, “England”! We don’t even hear that name now).
Of course I’m appalled and terrified and frustrated by “the weaponization of Justice”, the erosion of the entire Bill of Rights; the times are parlous, as Yeats described:”The best lack all conviction, while the worst/ Are full of passionate intensity”.
But do I really believe, feel, that we are beyond democracy, beyond constitutional government?
If I did, why would I follow the polls, and still hope, although of course with the obligatory cynicism, that election interference can be curbed by next November, and a vindicated and victorious Trump be inaugurated on 1/20/25?
Lippincott says no matter what the 2024 election results, the election will destabilize the country.
You may be thinking “Duh, is that all?” But I remember reading, decades ago, when I was just beginning my lifelong quest to comprehend history, that in Third World countries, elections are not the resolution of political crises; instead, they are just the signal for initiation and escalation of civil disorder.
Remember the awful summer of 2020? People assaulting other people up close and personal, expelling their breath in shouts and chants while obediently sporting those party-favor thin surgical masks-throwing bottles of frozen water, the umbrellas springing open like poisonous mushrooms, the fires? The breaking glass (surely that is THE iconic sound effect to the end of ordered liberty)? The piles of bricks mysteriously delivered, in broad daylight, to be stockpiled convenient to access by the coming night’s “protesters”? The burning of churches, including the historic church right next to the White House?
That, we have to face it, WAS “Donald Trump’s America”, just as much as the 3 glorious prior years.
Even if we vote him back into office, the armies of the night will never let us have our ordered liberty back.
Lippincott ( who admires and believes in Trump as much as I do) actually suggests at one point that Trump should just declare these “lawfare” prosecutions illegitimate and refuse to participate. Would “they” really DARE to physically assault and restrain him and take him to jail?
In my opinion: yuh.
Even if we win we can’t win.
Whereas if (gulp) Biden is reinstalled……I don’t think people like us will actually take up bricks, bottles, Molotov cocktails. I’m not even sure there will be ANY “destabilizing” activities вs Lippincott predicts. Jan 6 2021 was a minatory exercise. We don’t have to speculate as to what would happen to us.
No, I’ve been living in the waning days of a blessed illusion of peace and liberty.
But, as they say, that’s okay: they know me there—and I fancy I know my way around. So I reckon I’ll stay a while.
