A bit in jest, a nineteenth century European politician said that fools and Americans have a special guardian angel. Indeed, thanks to her location and other advantages, some American mistakes did not have the dire consequences that something analogous would have brought about in Europe. In our time, isolation is gone and affairs have become global. Even so, given old habits, a concerned warning regarding current matters and imaginable future scenarios are not likely to be taken fully seriously. This US version of “it cannot happen here and to us” is probably the greatest danger any country faces. An admitted problem is a challenge, an unnoticed problem is a peril. The boat taking water is bad news but can be dealt with by manning the pumps. Overlooking it causes the loss of the vessel.
The United States is imperiled by a siege mounted by forces that are already within the walls. So, “it is happening here”. How could this be? It began with a crisis that could be converted into a frontal attack on the country and its system. After what seems to be the plain murder of a black person, the cry went up that “black lives matter”. The racist implication given to it is that not all lives matter equally. Instantly, the Floyd case became an, in itself legitimate, cause around which a roguish movement crystallized. Once it gathered a mass, bolstered by the media looking for a cause, a crusade came about. It targeted the supporting pillars of the state whose freedoms allowed it to unfold.
Every popular movement wishes to transform its community somewhat. Added up, BLM and the elements that travel in its wake, wish more than a normal refurbishing of the “American house”. Proving that the claim of the marchers that they are “revolutionaries” is true, there is little that the “uprising” intends to leave in place. Indeed, the “reformers” wish not to re-decorate but to apply a wrecking ball. Stating this might not be what all wish to hear. The idea is not only upsetting but also proscribed for being non-PC by bringing up an out-of-favor reality.
Let us begin with some of the advocated causes and symptoms of BLM and its derivates. In their aggregate these undermine -yes, “undermine”- several of the sinews without which a community cannot function, society disintegrates, and its organization as a country is dismantled.
The casual observer might think that whatever comes under the BLM label directs its ire on mere symbols. Such as the National Anthem, or history as expressed by statues, names, and the use of some terms. This is followed up by attacking institutions prefaced by the advocated destructive policy regarding the police. Expect also that the proclaimed “autonomous zone” in Seattle will reoccur and end up in claims of “independence” for larger territories.
The radical policies meant, but still seldom openly admitted, as in “we are all trained Marxists”, depend on a re-writing of history. History happens to be the record and the identity of a community. If it can be proven that a society has not really existed, was founded on an immoral fallacy, that its heroes were criminals who deserve not a pedestal but to stand instead before an international tribunal, then the targeted entity will wobble. Such allegations, once they become “facts” by the extorted consent of the intimidated, deprive the system of its legitimacy. Once that becomes the case its defense will collapse. It is easy to catch a hare if you can convince it to self-amputate its hind legs.
In the light of the duties to which it points, this might be unpleasant to admit. Regardless of the right not to be made to feel uncomfortable, symbols are not empty rituals and meaningless objects that elicit the kowtow of tradition-bound conformists. At least those that direct the rampaging mob understand that symbols express a community’s substance and that, thereby they serve as a compass to navigate the waters ahead. Symbols then, are ways and attitudes judged to have been of past merit, and thus worthy of future emulation. Removing and demoting symbols involves retroactive punishment and suggests that the values that have created them are to be rejected and reversed. Small wonder that dictatorial take-overs will, for instance, rename streets. Reflecting turbulent times, Budapest’s most prestigious avenue bore at least five new names in the 20th century.
From the vantage point provided by a residence abroad, America’s rapid submissive transformation is stunning. It must be attributed to more than to the skillful “selling” of an alternative model concocted by snake-oil merchants.
The dangerous aspect of the attack on the USA is that it has managed to convince segments of the population that the country lacks legitimacy. The assault begins, as it must, with the assertion that the very founding of the Republic had been dishonest. Pointedly put, the Founding Fathers have produced a bastard. It should not take long before the big cannons will open fire at the Constitution. The context within which the Constitution is embedded has already been softened up. If the Constitution’s status can be demolished, the foundation of the American system will decompose. Challenging and showing studied disrespect for the national anthem, using another politically correct one instead, and “unmasking” the Founders, can be compared to cut wounds. Removing the Constitution from its pedestal is analogous to an amputation.
In some ways, not the hostility to America is what amazes. Since its inception the Republic has been a target. Monarchists and authoritarians, later national and international socialist, as well as left-liberals with paler stripes, have lined her path to cry “shame”. However, except for the crazies that are present in every society, the curses came largely from abroad and from elements whose unimpressed subjects, as has this writer, gladly migrated to join the despicable “enemy of mankind”.
It is not a historic first that the freedoms lived in a majoritarian democracy are attacked. Not with the intention of improving or enlarging these liberties, but to pursue ends that popular democracy prevents from being imposed. Such projects wish to replace the majority-based system of decision making, by a new source of legitimacy that expresses the superior quality of the advocates of system-change. Some elites, to the degree that they advocate extreme and impractical new ways of life, tend to find a fault in the principle of government by numerical majorities. (Lenin, invoking the legitimacy of a qualitative majority, explicitly refused to be guided by a “mere” numerical majority.) Such a rejection is the outcome of a discovery. It is that the majority, said to be uncouth and limited in its education and fantasy, is not capable to consent voluntarily to a new way of life that will liberate it from its inherited misery. The more radical the cause of frustrated elites is, the more likely that they will formulate a claim for their “temporary” rule as a vanguard in the interest of future generations to come.
An Achilles-heel, and an unavoidable feature of a functioning democratic order is, that its freedoms can be abusively exploited to attack, weaken, possibly to overthrow it. Resisting subversive elites is difficult because they say, put up with us as, after all, “tolerance is your principle”. Once in power, the same people declare “we must not to be tolerant because that is not our principle”. What might sound as a joke is a reality proven by practice. America experiences an upheaval that ignores not only facts and common sense, but whose actions violate civilized principles and ignore the personal rights of the majority.
A partial system of intimidating terror is already in place and it stifles those that resist the immoral nonsense of those that claim to be virtuous. Stand up, and your house gets burned, your business looted, you lose your job, and with the help of the MSM your reputation will be shredded.
What only a few years ago one would not have taken seriously as a future scenario is becoming reality. America is not the unsinkable carrier that one assumed it to be. The fellow-travelers and stowaways on board are allowed to take over. The majority is either cowed or is made to feel guilty. That to a degree that, given the flight-like withdrawal into the private sphere, individual resistance to the throng that demands repentance appears to have no chance. Many might feel so and it could even seem to be the case. Nevertheless, opportunities to change the carrier’s course away from the icebergs abound. A good one is nearing. Soon it will be November, and then, by making the cross at the right place, a thundering “stop, no more, desist” can shake the sky.
