Motus Mentis

10 Comments

1. Dave says

   We have reached the reductio ad absurdum of liberal democracy, so our next civil war must be of the “supersessionist” variety.

   As any object of nonzero volume falls toward a black hole, closer parts fall faster, stretching it out and tearing it apart. Today’s Republicans are far to the left of JFK, but Democrats have moved leftward much faster, greatly widening the rift between Ds and Rs, and between progressive Ds and moderate Ds.

   All will accelerate leftward until men of words are outfoxed by a man of action like Stalin or Deng who decides that this nonsense has gone on long enough, puts all those lefter than himself out to pasture, or under the pasture if they resist, and installs a “democracy with American characteristics” that closely resembles what leftists think we have now: sham elections, a corporate state run by and for corporations, where poor people are deprived of food, shelter, and health care, the media spews nationalist propaganda 24/7, and police crush all resistance without mercy and kill black people for sport.

   It’ll be a welcome breath of fresh air after all the prog faggotry we have to survive to get there.

   Posted August 10, 2020 at 4:04 pm | Permalink
2. Malcolm says

   Yes, I wrote about this tidal effect a few years ago:

   https://malcolmpollack.com/2017/03/11/there-is-a-tide-3/

   Posted August 10, 2020 at 4:14 pm | Permalink
3. Tina says

   Just started reading but wanted to note:

   Both of the wars fought on American soil, it could be argued, fall into this category: not only the one we now call “the Civil War,” but also the one we proudly refer to as the American Revolution.

   All three of the wars fought on American soil, as Texas’ War for Independence was also secessionist, and the breaking point was when Mexico dissolved its constitution and set up dictators in place of lawful governance.

   Posted August 10, 2020 at 7:19 pm | Permalink
4. Whitewall says

   https://pjmedia.com/columns/dennis-prager/2020/08/11/why-america-is-in-real-danger-n772970

   Posted August 11, 2020 at 6:47 am | Permalink
5. Malcolm says

   Tina,

   Yes, there have of course been other wars on American soil. I assumed that readers would know which ones I was referring to, but that was careless and imprecise. I should perhaps simply have named them.

   Posted August 11, 2020 at 11:36 am | Permalink
6. A Lansmesser says

   I worked overseas for over thirty years. Was involved in many conflicts. No matter how one describes them the death and destruction is beyond imagination. I saw Spanish losers in Mexico City clinging to their failed revolution. I saw Rhodesia after the glorius revoltuion had reduced its money to toilet paper and the elimination of various tribal groups. I saw the destruction of Kurdish communities and the death camps in Cambodia.

   Our Civil war had its Rubicon with John Brown who was funded by radicals in New England to forment a race war. The die was cast and the North ran with its martyr bs. A million Americans were to pay with their lives for the fantasties of a bunch of misguided leftwingnuts.

   We see the nation arming up. A storm is coming. There will be no division any more than there was one in Russia, France, Yugolsalvia or Sri Lanka. When extremeists rule an extreme solution shall prevail.

   After 50 years of having crap by the uniparty I don’t want reconciliation, it is not possible, it died with the thrashing of the monuments. I want a reckoning and retribution. As Mencken said there comes a point in every man’s life when he must raise the black flag. That time is approaching.

   Posted August 11, 2020 at 3:19 pm | Permalink
7. Munkastrap says

   I read your essay with interest, as the country does seem to be falling apart (as Putin laughs). But your description of Blue is not correct:

   Blue seems to believe increasingly that the whole thing was a sinister power-grab by a cadre of rich white males, designed to preserve and consolidate their immoral supremacy, and that the whole thing is so rotten that it should be torn up by its roots and replaced with something fairer and nobler. (Blue has already revealed that it wishes to see the Second Amendment, the Senate, the Electoral College, and our nation’s borders abolished—and its grievances hardly end there.)

   I am part of Team Blue, and I do not recognize this as a description of anything I want, or that my Blue colleagues want. Indeed, I don’t recognize this as any kind of modern leftwing liberalism that I’m familiar with at all. Modern liberalism holds that free-market conservatism leads to wealth concentration in the hands of a few, and the subsequent supression of the lower classes by these wealthy few ought to be met with limited government intervention to help the poor. There isn’t any desire to destroy the American system of government at all.

   What you wrote above seems to be an almost unrecognizable caricature.

   Posted August 13, 2020 at 1:33 am | Permalink
8. Whitewall says

   “I am part of Team Blue, and I do not recognize this as a description of anything I want, or that my Blue colleagues want”

   Munkastrap, I would be interested in knowing what tiny part of America you and your “blue” colleagues live in? Maybe you are on the wrong team?

   Posted August 13, 2020 at 7:27 am | Permalink
9. Malcolm says

   Munkastrap,

   I’m sorry to tell you this, but the Democrats have left you far behind. If you actually don’t want the things I’ve listed above, you should do what you can to see that they don’t prevail in November.

   Posted August 13, 2020 at 12:30 pm | Permalink
10. Jason says

    An excellent essay Malcolm. To complement your diagnosis, let me provide three cursory prescriptions that might help preclude a revolution that would devour America’s children.

    1. Over the next few years tens or even hundreds of thousands of individuals should – and will – embark on exoduses for more promising lands, voting with their feet. Americans from New York, California, and Massachusetts will seek more congenial moral, political, and spiritual isles in Texas, Iowa, and South Dakota. Along such lines groups will pursue either a spiritual or secular form of Rod Dreher’s Benedict Option, where they to a certain degree withdraw from mainstream cultural life into healthier, more cohesive communities that enable the conservative virtues to be respected.

    2. Ah, critics may object, such mobility is not enough. No matter where you hide, the omnipresent Leviathan will always find you. Try setting up an education co-op for instance, where traditional sexual mores antithetical to the LGBT belief system prevail, and you will be denounced. Your school may be denied accreditation or even prohibited from existing. As such scenarios potentially grow in the future, it’s hard to see how civil disobedience or resistance efforts will not come to the fore. In essence traditionalists will go all Andrew Jackson, arguing that “the federal government or courts have mandated for us a certain position on sexual ethics. Now let them try to enforce it!” I’ll confess this alternative makes me queasy, since the rule of law needs to be respected even when particular corollaries of it are foolish. But are conservatives to just endlessly tolerate the boot in the face?

    3. Finally, the obvious long term solution, which is for individual states (or localities or regions) to individually secede through the laborious constitutional amendment process. Naturally it would take a good deal of effort for the 75 percent threshold to be reached, but over time it could increasingly be seen as a mechanism to cut the Gordian Knot. I suspect in the year, say, 2050 we won’t have fifty but rather forty-seven or forty-eight United States, along with two or three new republics.

    Posted August 13, 2020 at 6:43 pm | Permalink