« Sunday Morning Book Thread 11-08-2020 |
Main
|
The Last Bush Betrayal »
November 08, 2020
What Can We Do?
It is tempting to lash out and agitate for the most aggressive and combative reactions to what is almost certainly a concerted effort to subvert the rule of law and steal the votes of millions of Americans. It is ironic that the Left in America has accused the Republican party of disenfranchisement for two generations, yet they have demonstrated that exact thing over the last week.
Because that is what has happened. Flooding the count with huge numbers of fraudulent ballots, undercounting Trump strongholds and overcounting Biden-supporting areas are functionally identical to voter intimidation, poll taxes, literacy tests and all of the things that traditionally are considered illegal impediments to free and fair elections.
With the addition of a hostile Fourth Estate that is almost unanimous in its hatred of Trump and support for the Democrat Party and its machinations, and a corporate social media complex that reminds one of Nazi Germany's captive industrial base, it is tempting to throw up one's hands and surrender, or agitate for more direct and violent action.
That is not the topic today; giving up is not an option when American Exceptionalism still lives...however attenuated it may be. And violence is absolutely the last option; I doubt anyone wants to revisit the Civil War.
But there are things we can do. Support President Trump with your voice, and your wallet if necessary. Write letters, call representatives, attend rallies, create more formal groups of like-minded Americans, rather than the traditional loose-knit groups that conservatives tend toward. We are individuals, and organizing is not our first nature...but now it needs to be!
Supporting alternative media sources is vital. OANN, NewsMax, and the various conservative websites and blogs provide a voice for those who have been marginalized by the traditional media.
One of the significant barriers to repairing the obvious structural advantages of the Democrat Party is the natural inclination of Democrats to work in government, and the equally natural disinclination of conservatives to seek employment in the most dysfunctional and least efficient segments of our economy. But that is where the power to manipulate elections resides. Government clerks and functionaries who manage the voting process are overwhelmingly Democrat, and until that changes we are at a significant disadvantage. How to change that is something that we need to examine, but at the very least, a robust presence of Republicans and conservatives at the polls to counter, at least a little bit, the overwhelming numbers of Democrats embedded in the structure of our election process is the minimum.
Hannah Arendt was correct (though incomplete) in her characterization: "The banality of evil." These are ordinary people who have accepted the profound disconnect between their actions and a moral and decent society. They are not murderers, but they are complicit in the murder of our constitutional republic.
But most of all we must be "The Happy Warrior," who:
Finds comfort in himself and in his cause;
And, while the mortal mist is gathering, draws
His breath in confidence of Heaven's applause:
This is the happy Warrior; this is he
That every man in arms should wish to be.