You Can Unscrew A Lightbulb...

     Can you unscrew a country? A country that’s just been hijacked by a gang of Usurpers who lack all sense of morality and restraint?

     I’ve written many times about the importance to our nation of mutual trust. I keep repeating this powerful quote from the late Benjamin M. Anderson:

     There is no need in human life so great as that men should trust one another and should trust their government, should believe in promises, and should keep promises in order that future promises may be believed in and in order that confident cooperation may be possible. Good faith -- personal, national, and international -- is the first prerequisite of decent living, of the steady going on of industry, of governmental financial strength, and of international peace.

     I mourn when I see the relics, the little reminders of the trust we once had for one another. It was the seldom noticed, never mentioned bedrock on which our forebears built the greatest nation in history. And now we have this, from Larry Correia on Facebook:

     Oh, we are so fucked. Today is nothing. It's probably going to get worse, because we're on a road that I can't see any off ramps.

     Sorry, here comes a rant.

     People are confused and constantly bombarded by conflicting information, some correct, some bullshit, and nobody knows what to believe because nobody trusts the people we are supposed to be able to trust. Then we have a super powerful global media complex that straight up gas lights everyone, and we're shocked the people have lost trust in information sources.

     Then when people have valid concerns, they get mocked, belittled, and insulted. They get gas lighted and told what they've seen with their own eyes didn't happen, and then they're "fact checked" with things that are basically a list of excuses generated by partisans who have zero clue what they're talking about.

     Repeat that daily, for literally every topic, and you get to a point where nobody trusts anybody and we have massive competing groups that can't even agree on basic pieces of relative truth anymore. And social media then rubs that in everyone's face, so we don't feel any commonality with our countrymen.

     But that's basically because we are several different countries crammed into one. As a people we've got two primary philosophies with a bunch of offshoots of those two, except they are mutually exclusive and cannot exist at the same time. So instead we get a muddled mixture of nonsensical bullshit that isn't really either, but is primarily a vehicle that exists to benefit the same people who benefit from our totally untrustworthy information sources.

     Then let's have a global pandemic, make everybody poorer, put them out of work, make everything they would normally do to blow off steam illegal, and once again if they express any concerns about this situation and the conflicting information presented to them, they get insulted, belittled, disparaged, and disrespected.

     Then let's have riots and looting and arson and murder for months on end, where the rule of law appears to be a one way street.

     Oh, and let's have a bunch of scandals with our political betters that tell everybody we have a two tiered justice system, where we're peasants, but our moral betters can do pretty much anything and get away with it.

     All while our information sources obviously lie and conflict with each other and run interference for their powerful friends, but giant soulless mega corporations will straight up destroy regular mundane people if they feel like it.

     And then at the very end of this shitty year, let's have [an] election that is insanely anomalous in a bunch of ways, but let's not actually investigate it in any meaningful manner, and instead let's just insult anybody who is concerned about it.

     Because nothing bad could possibly happen from tens of millions of people believing that their votes will never matter again and the system is irreparably rigged against them in a country with billions of guns and nuclear weapons.

     Whew... And that's just this year, after the last two decades of escalating tensions in a country filled with people who hate each other's fundamental beliefs.

     Which brings us to now... Which is why when buildings start exploding and politicians get beheaded, I won't be in the least bit surprised.

     And I'm usually the optimist. I'm seeing people I would consider boring vanilla normies, not gun culture people, not Trumpkins, not preppers, not even that political, now talking about violence and revolution like those are perfectly normal topics. Twenty years ago that was reserved for us internet gun nuts and taboo crazy talk for everyone else.

     Yeah...we are basically fucked.

     And I say to myself, what more is there to say?

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     Forget the Constitution. Forget “democracy.” Forget “the rule of law.” These have become “inoperative,” to borrow a word from the Watergate years. They’ve been reduced to passwords: “shibboleths,” if you will, that if deployed skillfully and in the right circumstances, will get a member of the Usurper Class thirty seconds of coverage on CNN. No longer does any vestige of their original meaning inhere in them. There are now only Rulers and Ruled.

     The Rulers have excavated a gulf to separate themselves from the Ruled. It’s intended to be uncrossable. Indeed, there are persons whose sole function is to prevent any of the Ruled from crossing it. Yet a tiny trickle will construct bridges of money and influence that they’ll pull in behind them. The tech barons. The identity-group demagogues. The elite among the talking heads.

     A great and indefinite struggle has begun. Some individuals will maneuver to attain a position within the Rulers: some to slake their power-lust; others merely to secure and expand their personal interests. Meanwhile, the rest of us will strive to remain out from under their crosshairs.

     George Carlin’s analysis will soon reach its ultimate expression in reality:

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     If there is to be no armed uprising, no military effort to take the country back from the Usurpers, then America is lost...quite likely forever.

     Laws will be passed late at night, sometimes in complete secrecy. Federal agents will be granted ever broader powers to interrogate, imprison, and despoil private citizens. Those of us who want only to be left alone will find any degree of personal privacy difficult to achieve. Those who have a little something to defend will be forced to elaborate, clandestine measures to defend it. Those who are targeted for destruction – a class that includes everyone who has spoken out against the Usurpers – will find it all but impossible to evade or placate their attackers.

     Elections? You can forget about them. The Usurpers have already captured the election mechanisms – the Boards of Election and the Secretaries of State – and they will do whatever it takes to retain iron control of them. There will be no salvation from that front.

     The Usurpers’ campaign to suborn our public institutions, our channels of information and communication, and our educational systems began more than a century ago. It has come to fruition. All that remains are our arms and our willingness to use them...if we’re willing to use them.

     Q: How many politicians does it take to change a lightbulb?
     A: Politicians don’t change lightbulbs; they prefer to operate in the dark.

     And so it will be, unless the spirit of resistance that gave birth to this country should rise afresh.