By the time you read this, America will have mostly made its choice:
Whether we will continue to attempt to shine the light of liberty across the world as the "last best hope of man on earth" - albeit a dim and flickering light, beset at home and abroad by a howling mobs of would-be exterminators, but better than nothing.
Or, whether we will have officially given up, resigning ourselves to a thousand years of darkness under techno-tyranny and eco-fascism, by an effectively one-party state answerable to no one.
Unfortunately, it's highly likely that you won't know anytime soon exactly what choice America actually made. Indeed, while 2020 has taught us never to make predictions, especially about the future, if we had to guess, we'd say we don't believe we ever will really know how America voted.
The Democrats have spent a solid year laying the
groundwork for electoral fraud so massive, widespread, and traceless,
that even with the best will in the world, the truth has been
permanently obliterated. In one of his famous gaffes, Joe Biden
even admitted as much, though of course this was instantly written off as a misstatement from the famously
inarticulate and senile Potemkin candidate. Perhaps it was, but
it's no less true.
Alas, there will be no salvation from the two organizations whose job it is to shed light on hidden truths. The media, as we all know, is fully dedicated to hiding anything that reflects poorly on Democrats, and has already announced that no social media casting doubt on electoral accuracy will be tolerated. As for the FBI, well, it's now been proven that they sat for a year on a laptop filled with evidence of Hunter and Joe Biden's involvement in foreign influence-peddling, intelligence-service investments, and money laundering, at the very same time as Donald Trump was being impeached on false accusations of the very same thing.
No, the days of the Untouchables are long gone; our much-vaunted FBI now reads from the playbook of East Germany's Stasi, working to defend those supported by the Swamp and frame those despised by the same. It tried to help Hillary's anti-Trump disinformation campaign to run him out of the White House, and utterly disregards any leadership from the actual elected occupant of the Oval Office if they don't like the direction he gives them.
It's possible, though unlikely, that Democrat incompetence and laziness will overcome them, and Donald Trump will once again squeak out a shock victory. The Left won't accept it, as they didn't accept his first one, and civil disturbances will continue as they've long promised, but at least we'll have a traditional American at the helm, such as it is.
More likely is an unknowable fudge, in which case anything goes and anything can happen. We won't even attempt to game this one out.
But let's consider what polls say to be the most probable outcome, should you choose to believe them: an overwhelming Biden Democrat victory, where far-left Democrats sweep all levels of government in numbers too vast to have been brought about by fraud. In this case, based on what Democrats have openly campaigned for, America will have legitimately democratically chosen to:
A brutal foreign conquest by Hitler's Nazis as depicted in the Amazon alternate-history series The Man in the High Castle could hardly be more permanently destructive of what makes America America, and what has made it unique.
The question is - what will you do? What obligation do you have to submit to what your fellow Americans have putatively decreed for you?
There's a well-known saying credited to Benjamin Franklin:
Democracy is two wolves and a lamb voting on what they are going to have for lunch. Liberty is a well-armed lamb contesting the vote.
Of course, it's one thing to slap a "You can have my gun when you pry it from my cold dead fingers" bumper sticker on the back of your F150. It's quite another thing to actually make that literal choice when Beto O'Rourke's goons come round on that very mission.
This is no mere rhetorical question, though: - your humble correspondent has in recent weeks been personally asked it by those near and dear. Alas, answer came there none - I don't know exactly what I shall do. Taking to the South Dakota hills hermit-style holds no appeal, nor does my age and (lack of) experience recommend recourse to armed resistance.
Yet Ben Franklin was considerably older than myself when the Revolution came, and he did not shirk from running grave personal risks - just not so much physical ones, most of the time. And so far as we know, it's not like he was offered an obvious direct choice at one specific point in time: betray the Revolution and accept (say) a knighthood from King George, or be locked up to die in a prison hulk?
No, he made small choices each and every day, that led him on the path to the hundreds of years of honor and greatness he's enjoyed with the rest of our Founders, until we've failed to defend them for the latest generation who condemn him and his monuments as just another despised Dead White Male.
Will you choose to refuse to wear a mask in public despite a lawless diktat ordering it, or to identify yourself to a restaurateur as now demanded? Will you knuckle under and do what you're told? Or will you just stay home ordering stuff online, hoping it all goes away on its own while lining the pockets of Amazon and, indirectly, the Democrats who receive 3/4 of their donations?
And, what will you choose to hold as your deference to the Federal government, once a Democrat House and Senate have duly passed legislation to legalize all illegal aliens, create states out of Puerto Rico and Washington DC, expand the Supreme Court with an additional half-dozen far-leftists appointed by President Biden and/or Harris, and approved the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact to eliminate the moderating effect of the Electoral College?
All these actions are perfectly constitutional and have been
promised by the Democrats currently running; if elected, they'll have
every apparent right to pass them, with the inevitable result that no
conservative will ever win national office in our lifetimes. In
other words, perfectly legally,
our country will have been taken from us and, as Barack Obama promised,
fundamentally
transformed
into effectively a one-party state dedicated to the obliteration of
historic American values, beliefs, traditions, and principles.
Don't say you'll move to Canada or New Zealand - they're much
further to the left than even our looniest elected Democrats, and at
the moment they won't let you in anyway.
Unless you're Elon Musk, don't say you'll decamp to Mars or the Moon. Yes, in effect, that's what our Pilgrim forebears did, but alas, the technology isn't quite there. We're more in the Henry-the-Navigator era of space travel; there's a few centuries remaining before the Space Mayflower is a viable possibility.
Half a century ago, Ronald Reagan presented elections as "A Time for Choosing." Which they were, are, and have been - alas, in the main, the choices presented have been bad, and the choices made wrong.
It looks like we're now moving out of the realm of conventional politics that can be settled on a scheduled basis every few years at the ballot box. The Democrats believe that if they win this one, they'll have all the marbles, and never have to answer to anyone ever again.
Will they be right? The answer to that will be made up over the next weeks, months, and years of small, individual choices made every day by countless unknown ordinary Americans. It will be a time of choosing, which collectively will determine our fate.
What does Chinese history have to teach America that Joe Biden doesn't know?
@petrarch:
i must dispute your references to a "federal" government; we haven't had a federal government for over a century.
ever since TR (a "progressive" republican) used the presence (and implied threat) of the u.s. navy to win panama's war of seccession from columbia so that he could build his canal (the treaty with the u.s. was signed without a *single panamanian* present), the ongoing trend of the federal legislative decline was set. when the power of the u.s. states over the federal government was gutted by 17th amendment (direct election of senators), the power of the national government became supreme. finally, when the power to raise money (other than excise taxes, which is how the *federal* government used to be funded) was made unlimited by the 16th amendment, the national government gained the ability to make "grants" to the states, so that the states are now *dependent* upon that money, thus allowing the national government to run the everything. and the courts are filled with activist judges who believe that the outcome of any decision has to enhance "social justice," regardless of what the laws and the constitution say. example: *some* presidential directives may not be reversed by a subsequent president (DACA).
thus, i would argue that the u.s. has a *national*, as opposed to a *federal*, form of government. the states are now little more than a political subdivision of the nation, holding only a few vestiges of the power they were intended to have (e.g., national government agencies like FEMA must be invited into the state before they can begin helping). these tattered remnants of their former power will soon be removed by the soon-to-be leftist national court system, which pays no attention to the constitution, once the NAZIcrats steal the 2020 election.
What's so bad about all this? Maybe personal liberty in the traditional sense is no longer viable in the 21st century. Maybe Earth is just too full for that model to work anymore, with pollution, disease, terrorism, and cruise missiles having obliterated natural defenses and distance. Maybe technocracy really is a better way to govern than democracy. I don't know, but it seems we will find out one way or the other in the years ahead.