After The Fall

     "For centuries Galactic civilization has stagnated and declined, though only a few ever realized that. But now, at last, the Periphery is breaking away and the political unity of the Empire is shattered. Somewhere in the fifty years just past is where the historians of the future will place an arbitrary line and say: 'This marks the Fall of the Galactic Empire.'
     "And they will be right, though scarcely any will recognize that Fall for additional centuries."

     [Isaac Asimov, Foundation]

     The destruction of a political entity as large as a contemporary nation-state is not a discrete or “digital” event. It’s a process that stretches over years, sometimes decades. During that process, great forces contrive to present an appearance of normality and “everything under control,” even as still greater forces work to hollow the edifice and render it susceptible to toppling. when the final collapse arrives, many are shaken by its “suddenness.” Many more pretend to be, though they were aware of the process, and its probable terminus, all the while.

     I have come to believe that the fall of the constitutional federal republic called the United States of America began some decades ago. Despite America’s appearance of world-bestriding power, the process probably started well before the World Wars, no later than the Wilson Administration. What we’re witnessing now, as a corrupt Congress prepares to certify the takeover of the federal executive branch by America-hating insurrectionists while a corrupt judiciary looks on indifferently, is something akin to Cheyne-Stokes respiration. There may still be life in the patient, but the odds are great against its return to true vitality.

     Some will attempt to resuscitate the patient. Others will do their best to prevent them. Most will watch in helpless bewilderment, baffled at how the greatest sociopolitical experiment in human history could have come to this. And yes, afterward a semblance of normal American life will continue, for most if not all.

     Not many will be aware that the process began long ago. It could have been halted at its inception, had our forebears had a modicum of foresight and the willingness to act. But lack of awareness of a terrible fact doesn’t affect the fact itself.

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     I’ve only just learned of this development:

     WASHINGTON (AP) — Bracing for possible violence, the nation’s capital has mobilized the National Guard ahead of planned protests by President Donald Trump’s supporters in connection with the congressional vote expected Wednesday to affirm Joe Biden’s election victory.

     Trump’s supporters are planning to rally Tuesday and Wednesday, seeking to bolster the president’s unproven claims of widespread voter fraud. “There are people intent on coming to our city armed,” D.C. Acting Police Chief Robert Contee said Monday.

     It’s a typical, scurrilously Left-slanted Associated Press article. Nevertheless, it leads with an important fact: military forces are being deployed to prevent any protest of the stolen election. Note that nothing of the kind happened when Antifa / BlackBloc forces assaulted pro-trump celebrations in Washington four years ago. The insurrectionists are maneuvering to prevent even the appearance of resistance to their coup. They must feel a need to preserve a facade of “the consent of the governed” against any suspicions to the contrary.

     The District of Columbia is but a few steps from transforming itself into a walled city, a citadel in which the power elite are secure against the outrage and protests of the hoi polloi. The Establishment surely desires that outcome. The use of soldiery to prevent the massing of opposition is the penultimate stage of their coup. The final stage is the disarming of the citizenry: a stroke the usurpers have already announced as their intention.

     As many others have already observed, the Founding Fathers would be shooting and erecting gallows today. But they would have started doing so long ago.

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     This morning I am gripped by a terrible foreboding. I’d hoped that President Trump would have a clinching move to play, a rabbit out of the hat that would set the coup at naught and bring its plotters to justice. It appears that no such move is in prospect. Certainly we can expect nothing from our cowardly jurists, who would rather watch the nation burn than accept any hazard to themselves. But then, what is left, other than a mass uprising by We the People?

     Will a great mass of We the People confront American soldiers armed with military grade weaponry and pre-assured – quietly, no doubt – that any casualties to “rioters” will be quickly and cleanly swept under Washington’s voluminous rug? If so, what would follow? How many are willing to stake their lives, their fortunes, and their sacred honor on the possibility of replevin from this blatantly stolen election?

     To you who plan, in the face of all the disincentives, to go to Washington tomorrow and confront the usurpers and their Myrmidons: I salute you. I hope there are millions of you. I hope your numbers so intimidate the usurpers that they flee in terror before a round can be chambered, much less fired. I pray that it won’t cost you everything you hold dear.

     But that, sadly, is a hope against hope. The usurpers have pushed all their chips to the center of the table. They have come too far, and have nowhere to retreat; they must win or die. If the mass murder of American patriots is required to preserve their gains, then the mass murder of American patriots is what will be.

     Stay tuned. And pray.