Authority
Who is guarding the the guards?
Is it the citizens
It should be the citizens.
The way the citizens guard the guardians is via free elections.
However, if it turns out that the nation is so deeply divided that a minority feels that it can never win an election, then we have a problem. And that may well be the situation patriots find themselves in, in the US of the near future. Rationalizations about fake polls and voter fraud cannot disguise the fact that the basic, unstated assumptions that have animated our population for over two centuries -- basic patriotism, pro-Americanism -- are rapidly vanishing among the newer, university-indoctrinated, generations. In short: Trump may well be the last Republican president.
Usually, this sort of irreconcilable conflict occurs when the majority and the minority are of two different tribes: two different 'races', or 'nations' or religions: we see this in Northern Ireland (Catholics and Protestants); in the former Yugoslavia (Catholic Croats vs Orthodox Serbs vs Muslim Bosniaks and Muslim Albanians; also Slovenes and Montenegrans);in Spain (Catalans and Basques and ... whatever the majority is called); in Central and Eastern Europe during the 20th Century (Hungarians, Czechs, Germans, Poles, Ukrainians); in Czechoslovakia (Czechs vs Slovaks); in Cyprus (Greeks vs Turks); in the Middle East (Jews vs Arabs, various religious denominations of Arabs against each other (Sunni Muslims vs Shia Muslims vs Arab Christians); all over Africa -- famously, Hutus vs Tutsis in Rwanda; but in almost every other African country as well; in Sri Lanka (Hindu Tamils vs Buddhist Sinhalese); in Burma (Buddhists vs Rohingya Muslims); Armenians vs Azerbaijanis; Kurds vs Persians and Arabs and Turks (all of them Muslim); I could go on but it's too depressing.
What the hell, one more: can't leave India out, especially since India produces some annoying Leftie moralizing intellectuals who love to shake their accusing fingers at the West for its 'racism'. India is, like the old Czarist empire, a 'prisonhouse of nations', the most outstanding prisoner being Muslim Kashmir, which should have become part of Pakistan when the British left after the war and the Hindus and Muslims of British India killed each other to the number of about a million as they split into two countries, Pakistan and India. Muslims and Sikhs are still lynched in the street in India by Hindu mobs from time to time, while the police look the other way.
Now our geniuses of the Left look at this reality and conclude "Diversity is Strength!" .... do they know they are parodying Orwell's 1984, with its "War is Peace" and "Ignorance is Strength!" reality-turned-inside-out slogans propagated by Big Brother? (They seem to take Orwell's book as a How-To manual, especially the concept of Thoughtcrime.)
Where two tribes in a single country occupy different geographic areas, with little overlap, then the solution to tribal conflict is simple -- separate: the Swedes and Norweigans did over a century ago, the Czechs and Slovaks did it more recently: just split up: one nation becomes two.
The trouble starts when a lot of each tribe lives on land with a lot of the other tribe: when the warring tribes are 'interpenetrated': then, who rules the jointly-occupied land can only be settled -- as old Bismarck said all the great issues facing manking were settled -- by blood and iron. The Twentieth Century has seen many forced mass population transfers, following massacres.
Sometimes one of the warring tribes doesn't have to form a brand-new country. The Catholics of Northern Ireland don't want a new country: they have the country they want to join right next door: the Irish Republic. Similarly, if the Hindus can be 'persuaded' to let go of Kashmir, it will join Pakistan.
The only continent to escape serious tribal warfare is South America: the indigenous tribes of Indians were, and are, too primitive to form their own 'nations', and the Spanish conquistadores didn't bring their own women with them, and thus interbred with the locals, so creating among their descendants a smooth spectrum from white to non-white, which some have called a 'pigmentocracy'. So although there is definitely conflict between the impoverished Indian tribes, and people descended from them, on the one hand, and the light-skinned Hispanic ruling elite, on the other, in many of these countries (Venezuela is a prime example, although this is not generally known), it takes a Left vs Right form, rather than an outright national/tribal form.
If Mexico were a modern country, Hispanics in the Southwest would want to reverse the conquest and re-join Mexico. But they are ashamed of Mexico (rightly) so this is not a popular demand. Chicano (as we called them then) nationalists in the 1960s/70s had to invent an imaginary country. 'Aztlan', which they would create when they drove out the Anglo invaders.
American Blacks are prevented by both geography and good sense from wanting to unite with, or immigrate to, any current Black-run nation, but they are also too scattered around the US to have a 'natural' nation with boundaries in North America. In the 1930's, the CPUSA, mechanically following the Russian model, declared that there was a 'Black Belt' in the American South (those counties where Blacks were a majority) which should have the 'right of self-determination'. Few Blacks at that time supported this lunatic idea.
So it's hard to see the US disintegrating on purely ethnic lines, a la Yugoslavia. Rather, ethnicity will have a political proxy, as it does in Latin America -- the Right will be mainly white, the Left will be multi-racial, with its Black and Hispanic components asserting their racial interests, and its white component apologizing for existing. This will be interesting to watch.
This assumes, of course, that the US does start to come apart. It would be a world-historic tragedy if this happened, but there is no overall purpose or benevolent guiding spirit in human affairs, so this could indeed occur. If the US were not the greatest military power in the world, with a plentiful supply of nukes, disintegration would be much more likely. As China rises and we decline, and as we -- hopefully -- shake off the chains of empire, the centripetal forces pushing us together will diminish.
Some people on the Right take the brute reality of racial political preferences for something desirable, and want to proclaim a white 'ethno-state' as their goal. This would be a terrible mistake. Patriots must continue to assert that we represent the continuity of the original American Republic, as it has evolved, which means we must be officially color-blind, and in fact should bend over backward to encourage patriots of every race, color and creed to join us.
If you don't see a moral reason for this, consider a practical one: suppose only ten percent of non-white voters want to live in a color blind, Constitutional-originalist, Republic. (This is (very) roughly the number of non-whites who support conservative candidates in elections.) About 125 million people vote in the US. Assume a third of them are non-white. This means about four million non-whites support the patriotic candidates. Do we really want to reject four million allies in the coming struggle?
Not to mention that there are many white patriots who will not join an explicitly white racialist movement. They may not join the other side either, preferring to sit out a conflict which they see as between two evils. In any case, it should be clear that attempting to tie the patriotic movement to white ethno-nationalism is worse than a crime, it is a blunder.
So ... something to provoke some discussion on this new website.
Yep can't split a nation when they are spread out.
But with hashtag walk away trending maybe we won't need too. And maybe that's y leftists are panicking and trying the craziest stuff.
Some people think that if Trump wins, the democrat party will be over with. Obviously, a new one will replace it (I guess), so then what situation would that put us in? Would we be better off or worse off?
By the way, nice to see you on some forums again, Doug!
In the days of the wigs some wigs went dem some republican.
we may see a marginalized Democratic Party for years before they finally breath their last.
Then who knows libratarian vs republican. Who knows..
one thing for sure the dems won't give up quietly!
WOW...thank you gentlemen. This is the best discussion I've seen in quite a while. There is SO much to comment on, but you all know what I'm faced with and finding a lot of comment time is tricky. Let me say this; I believe this election is an existential moment for the Democrat party, but I don't think they'll cease to exist if Trump wins. Rather, I believe they'll be so marginalized, and all but hated, that they will not be effective for much of anything in the future. Moreover, I believe that what base they have left will splinter into a far-Left party of their own, which will further marginalize the remnants of the party entirely.
Most of you also know I don't believe Trump can lose without massive, widespread cheating--which I believe with all sincerity they are not only going to try, but they're going to do. They aren't going to try to win--Trump has 20-40% of the black vote locked up, and they can't win without that. They're going to try to keep it close enough to do one of two things; either tie it up in the courts long enough that somehow they can snag the thing (less likely), or that they can convince their nimrod soldiers in BLM/ANTIFA that TRUMP is the one who cheated, and set the country ablaze (much more likely). That's the scenario we're most preparing for.
The real question is where do we go, as a country and a world, from here?
My unpopular, even with me, answer is this--nowhere. America as it was conceived, and as we've known it in our lifetimes, is finished. The divisions are too deep, there is no common enemy to rally around and unify us, and when there was (we had pretty good unity in September of 2001) we squandered it. We allowed George W. Bush to pass the horribly-named "Patriot Act" which is in great part why we're here today (possibly the single least "patriotic" piece of legislation in American history). And to this day we're bending over for it.
For the short term, not much will change if Trump wins, other than the destruction we see in the American cities unless he is able to win with such a mandate that he's given free reign to crush the insurrection. If he wins that convincingly, perhaps America will recover. But if he doesn't, we'll retain the slight majority we have now, the division will continue to fester, and eventually we will either fight it out with bullets or agree to break it all up. My head says he could win with that kind of mandate; my heart fears he will not, or they'll cheat enough to make it appear he hasn't. And my ultimate brain says that twenty years from now we'll probably have at least two different countries, maybe more, where the United States once was.
It was a good run.
BUT--I'm still preparing as if Trump wins by a large enough majority to consider it a "mandate". As I've said, I believe he should, and if their cheating can be minimized, he will. Then it's just mop-up, at least for now. Defend our homes, crush the rebellion, and cleanup on aisle six.
Well said.
I think the only way we get all out war is if we end up with two presidents in one way or another. Pelosi and trump.
Then it's possible it escalates in to full civil war if the military divides its war.
Thank you for the kind compliment, O Sleeper.
Since predictions of defeat help cause defeat, I won't elaborate or repeat this observation: I do not share the optimism of everyone else here. Since I don't have direct contact with many Americans, I may be missing something, but my money is on a Biden victory. Not literally, since I lost $100 in the last election by betting on a Hillary victory (that way I thought, I would at least be able to drown my sorrows with a free hundred dollars) ... and perhaps it's the natural pessimism of old age. I hope so.
With almost any other Republican President than Trump, the recent riots and general Leftist insanity would be a huge gift to the Right. A ruthless, intelligent, amoral man like Richard Nixon would exploit this stuff to the full. But history has chosen otherwise for us. It seems to have said, "I gave you a Lincoln. I gave you a Churchill. I gave you an FDR. I gave you a Reagan. You're getting spoiled. Try this one."
In any case, we have to have a Plan B, a post-Dunkirk spirit. If the Bad Guys win, especially if they win big, we have to prepare for a period of defensive warfare. Because they will have to rule. All America's problems will then be blamed on them, at least by many of the broad, independent middle. And if we get lucky again, a new leader of the Right will emerge. (If I could make one change in popular vocabulary, it would be to substitute for the words 'Right' and 'Conservative', the phrase 'Defenders of Western Civilization', because that is exactly what we are now.)
If we are consistently unlucky, the AntiFa/BLM/Hard Left will have the brains not to make life difficult for their Democrat enablers, and will go into build-your-strength-up mode, capitalizing on Democrat victory.
This will mean getting compliant, broken police departments to replace the existing ones; speeding up the internal destruction of the military by purging patriotic soldiers and promoting politically-reliable ones who see their service as just another government job; purging the academy of any non-Leftists who remain; doing the same to the school system; and cracking the whip over the heads of the 'woke' corporations, forcing them to hire the relatives of BLM activists and put them into no-real-work-required pseudo-jobs. (Jesse Jackson can show them the details of how to do this.) They'll also go after any independently-minded journalists who don't sign the BLM Loyalty Oath, and do the same in all other professional organizations, such as the Bar Association.
But ... if we get a bit of luck to compensate for the Democratic victory, they'll take this victory as a FULL SPEED AHEAD signal, and resume their occupations, riots, and general destructive behavior.
Actually, there will almost certainly be a split within their ranks on this issue -- there are some forces on the Left who see the Democrats as just as much an enemy as the Republicans --and they won't want to modify their behavior to take into account the fact that the Democrats are in charge. (Note that most of their most violent riots have been in Democrat-controlled cities.)
In fact, there is an acrimonious debate going on within the Left right now on the issue of voting Democratic this autumn: groups that would, in the past, have rather swallowed sulphuric acid than vote Democrat -- even for Bernie Sanders -- have now come out in favor of voting for him. But others have remained loyal to their traditional beliefs. The pick of Kamala Harris, the cop-lover, won't help. (A sophisticated pro-Western Civilization movement would find ways to heat up this fight within the Left. But our side is not up to that level of warfare, unfortunately.)
Never forget the proven fact that the Marxists cannot actually do or produce anything. Hence a territorial civil war is impossible. They cannot survive alone. They are parasites and need us as willing hosts. If they gain political power, we do not need to actually defeat them. All we need is to not comply. Widespread civil disobedience on our part will do the trick. Then get your popcorn, and watch the show as they self destruct with their ill gotten power.