Don't be tempted to roll over and play dead. Fight back!

I'm getting very tired of doom, gloom and disaster articles painting a dismal picture of the present mess in these United States.  They're all probably right, to at least some extent, as to what caused it:  but they don't offer solutions.  It's as if their authors are throwing up their hands in surrender, because it's too late to fix things.

Here are some examples.  All are by leading authorities and observers of our current situation, not by nonentities or alarmists.  They deserve to be taken seriously.  I do recommend you read each article, if only to be better informed of the size and scope of the challenge facing us.  Key quotes follow each linked headline.

America Held Hostage:  This is how the Left campaigns to remove President Trump.

We’re in the middle of a chicken game, where the Left tells us they’ll let this go on as long as Trump is president. The liberal media will ignore the riots, the liberal mayors will tell the local police to stand down, the liberal prosecutors will promptly release anyone arrested. Try to defend yourself, and you’ll find yourself prosecuted.

The message is: this is what you’ll get, America, if you reelect Trump. Elect our guy, and the madness will stop, pronto. A Democratic president would forcefully suppress the riots without a peep from the press. But until then we’re held hostage.

An Industry of Lies is Working to Guarantee an Appointed Presidency in 2020 and Beyond

There is no logic to statue toppling, name changing, or culture canceling other than the quest to assert power, humiliate authorities, and create crises where they do not exist in order to manufacture a faux state of emergency – in service of a political agenda. In some sense, whether any statues fall is contingent entirely on the lack of resistance.

The truth is that the COVID-19 epidemic, the lockdown, and the rioting were seen by the Left, the media, and now the Democratic Party as a renewed effort in this election year to do what Robert Mueller, Ukraine, and impeachment had not – abort the presidency of Donald Trump, or make it impossible for him to be reelected.

The brand of all cultural revolutions is untruth about the past and present in order to control the future. Why we have let this happen to our country is the only mystery left.

Scamocracy in America

At its core, the ruling class politics of Covid-19 is now no more about public health than environmentalism is about the environment, or Feminism is about doing good to women, or BLM is about saving black lives, or the education establishment is about cognition, or the national security establishment is about public safety. None of these causes are about their purported objective than communism was about equality or the proletariat. Lenin made clear in “What Is To Be Done?” (1902) that the revolution is all about power for “the vanguard of the proletariat.” The Party. Like communism, each of today’s revolutionary movements is based on its own lie, and all are all scams—the purpose of which is to transfer ever more power to the ruling class —specifically to its “vanguard,” the Democratic Party.

America's Sovereignty Is Teetering on a Precipice

All this has left our nation teetering on the edge of a precipice. I believe we have a small window of time to reclaim our core values and principles. Reclaiming what made America unique among nations will require educating young and old about national history and its Judeo-Christian roots. It will also require civic knowledge and a return to patriotism. It is the American national identity that will hold us together, not the divisive tribalism fostered by identity politics.

If we are to survive this moment of massive unrest, men and women of goodwill must step up to build on what our nation’s founders left behind. Building will require a rediscovery of our founding documents and the biblical principles that emphasize loving one’s neighbor as one’s self. The Golden Rule to do unto others as you would have them do unto you applies.

As I said earlier, those are all good articles, by notable correspondents, and deserve our attention.  Sadly, none of them can come up with any specifics about what to do about our current situation, and how to do it.

I'd like to offer a few proposals for consideration.  Bear in mind that I'm neither Republican nor Democrat, and I can't be tagged as "liberal" or "conservative", or "left-wing" or "right-wing", in any simplistic sense.  To the frustration of some of my critics, I probably embody elements of all of the above in my makeup.  That's because I've seen and experienced far more than the average person during my life so far, and I've learned the hard way that things are seldom black and white.  There are an awful lot of shades of gray in human existence, and if we fail to recognize that, we're storing up trouble for ourselves.  Black and white means "my way or the highway".  Shades of gray means, "Can we negotiate in good faith, so that neither of us gains everything we want, but neither of us loses it all, either?  Can we get to a point where both of us get at least something?"  Far too many people, today, reject that out of hand - and that makes governing our fractious country impossible.

So, what can we do?

1. Identify those in our own towns, regions and states who permit and/or tolerate and/or encourage radical hard-liners.  DA's who won't prosecute rioters;  mayors who restrict civil rights and liberties in the name of authoritarian dictatorship; left-wing leaders who won't allow local law enforcement agencies to uphold the rule of law;  politicians (local, state and national) who fan the flames and stoke the fires with partisan, radical rhetoric, rather than trying to lead all of the people whom they were elected to represent.  Make a note of all of them - and next election, vote against them.  Vote for the best possible candidate in the field, irrespective of party;  and if there isn't one, vote against the worst possible candidate in the field, even if that means voting for someone whom one wouldn't normally support.  Be active, not passive, in standing for what is right and against what is wrong.  If no-one else will take the initiative, why not run for office yourself?
2. Get together with other locals to discuss local problems and find ways to deal with them.  Start with a small group, then reach outward to other individuals and groups.  Remember, "all politics is local", whether we like it or not.  Identify problems locally and fix them, and you'll have made a start on expanding the fix to your region, your state, and eventually your nation.  (In one sense, that's what the COVID-19/BLM/Antifa brouhaha is all about.  The enemies of our democracy are trying to make their tactics local, imposing them from the top down by bringing in outside activists, forcing local communities to cooperate with and/or tolerate such antics, or else.  Our counter is to refuse to be panicked or dictated to or threatened, but to stand tall and respond as the situation demands.  Witness Virginia and its "Second Amendment Sanctuary" counties, rebelling against that state's centrally-imposed anti-gun diktat.  It's spreading across the country.  Follow that example!)
3. Support those who stand for what is right.  They may not have all the right ideas, or have views that reflect ours in every respect:  but if, on balance, they have more of what we like and less of what we don't, we should support them.  It's long past the time to insist on ideological purity.  That's a luxury we can no longer afford.  The November 2020 elections will be a stark choice - perhaps the last opportunity to choose - between chaos and anarchy on the one hand, and stable constitutional government on the other;  between America as a nation, and a globalist, nebulous "world order" that sees America as a problem rather than a solution.  I know which option I support, and it has nothing to do with Republican or Democratic politics.  It's what Angelo Codevilla refers to as "America's ruling class" - and whether or not they'll be allowed to run us, and our nation, into the ground.
4. Recognize that this is a long-term problem.  It arose over decades, and it's going to take decades to sort it out - unless it degenerates into another civil war, which will sort it out sooner when the victor imposes its vision on the loser.  If we aren't the victor, we won't enjoy that - guaranteed!
5. Prepare for the long haul.  Others have already pointed out this need, including this blog.  Things are not going to get better overnight.

As Chris Martenson recently put it:

I am bracing for impact.

I simply don’t know what else to do.  We are on our own.

It’s time to consider how you will provide your family with the basics, the very bottom layers of Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs — water, food, shelter, resources, health & safety — if the systems we depend on today start weakening.

When people are busy moving down the Hierarchy of Needs, that means society is crumbling.

And folks are already indeed moving. Literally. Real estate for sale in Manhattan is piling up without takers, while more rural properties are being snapped up.  Gardens are being planted and guns are being bought.

. . .

So my advice is to brace for impact.  There’s nothing any of us can do to affect national monetary policy or stop the major unraveling trends already set in motion, but we can do our best to step outside harm’s way and tend the welfare of ourselves and those we care about as the system falters.

True words - and that's where our recovery starts as a nation, too.  Get the grassroots sound and solid, then build upward on that foundation.

As we "brace for impact", let's help each other - those around us, the communities in which we live - brace for impact as well.  That community may be as small as a couple of households, or a group of like-minded friends and their families, or a neighborhood street;  but it is still a community, and we need the support of a community if we're to get through this.  If we don't have such a community, it's high time we started building one.

At the very least, we can plan for mutual defense against infiltrating BLM/Antifa goons.  The security of our neighborhoods is everyone's business, particularly since our law enforcement agencies may or may not be able - or even allowed - to help everyone who needs it.  (Just ask cops in Minneapolis, or Seattle, or NYC, and those who most needed their help during recent riots.)

Peter