Revolution? It's time to ponder the possibility
TAT readers,
Well, I’ve begun two different essays this week, but with being a bit under the weather, this is the first to be finished. Today’s essay is not about panic or fear-mongering, but a simple question based on years of my research, and professional threat analysis. A simple history book could regurgitate the facts of America’s collapse into a nation that doesn’t give a damn about our constitution, laws, courts, history etc., etc., etc., but the facts alone, are not persuasive when considering a way forward. Today’s narrative is intended to persuade readers to begin considering that a revolution may be the only way to restore our constitutional republic.
Today’s essay, is the narrative of why it’s now time to prepare for a revolution as the only mechanism capable of restoring what the current regime has and will continue stealing from us. I have made my decision, and it’s to fight for what 250 years of Americans have protected with their lives. Okay, I get it, this sounds terrifying at first glance but don’t jump to conclusions, because not all revolutions are violent or represented by civil war. Sometimes revolutions are every bit as peaceful as they are dynamic. For example, the 1980-1989 Solidarity Movement lead by Polish worker, Lech Walesa, undid much of Soviet oppression until the Soviet Union utterly collapsed. The 1989 Velvet Revolution in Czechoslovakia overturned their Soviet-sponsored communist government, without firing a shot. The examples of peaceful revolution throughout history are inspiring, to say the least.
Of course, we tend to remember violent revolutions somehow more easily. Our War for Independence from Britain and the French Revolution are bold examples and nothing that we wish to pursue… unless we are forced to defend ourselves from our current Republican police state. Violence is not out of the question for us and whichever way we pursue our revolt, we have reached the point where if we are to survive based on our founding principles, revolution is an option now on the table. Please read that again… “revolution is on the table.” The only questions remaining is what form it will take and how many Americans will support it.
Onward
First I will address the “why now” question for our uprising. It’s actually the easiest point to make in this essay and comes down to just a couple of primary points.
America is its people and our constitution. Our people are now oppressed severely and all because to the administration and the Republican Party, it no longer matters.
Our SCOTUS has made a mockery of our legal system by interpreting our constitution in a manner that twist its words into a pretzel, in order to justify illegality for autocrats and oligarchs. The ancient phrase dating back to the birth of democracy in ancient Greece, “we are all equal before the law” has become a sad joke after Chief Justice John Roberts’ “immunity” decision regarding Trump’s illegal activities.
The Trump regime and again… the Republican Party breaks the law on a daily basis and there are zero repercussions. Murders of legally protesting US citizens by ICE, go unpunished and uninvestigated. Immigrants both legal and undocumented, are abused in the most horrific manner while that protesters exercising their constitutional rights are arrested and abused by thuggery, not law enforcement.
Republican voters will not abandon Trump or their party because they are in lay terms, brainwashed. For over thirty years, incremental conditioning by FOX News, now in conjunction with a whole right-wing extremist media empire, have programmed their audiences with a whole new political identity, that can easily be controlled.
For a hundred years or so, first the Bolsheviks, followed by the Soviet Union and now Putin’s Russia have deployed influence operations against the US and Europe. Those operations came to be called Active Measures by the Soviets, and continue to this day as a primary weapon of Russia. The key objective of Active Measures is to achieve, reflexive control over their target audiences. All this means is that our adversaries can sit in Moscow and punch buttons and keys, that will trigger well-conditioned audiences to predictably say, do or think whatever they have been programmed by the conditioning, to do.
To add to this, the Republican Party has been taking lessons from the Russians for a couple of decades. They have cooperated against you and I successfully, beginning with the nonsense about president Obama’s birth certificate. Onto this lunacy, they have built an entire library of conspiracy theories that our Republican family, friends, neighbors and coworkers have internalized. The triggers built into Republicans and echoed by a spineless media environment, keep them brainwashed beyond recovery.
In my long career in CT/ Counterterrorism, I became quite familiar with so-called “deradicalization” programs, not just in the US. I mean no disrespect to the CVE (countering violent extremism) community at large, however success rates are murky at best and often written in narrative rather than producing quantitative data. My professional opinion is that once an individual passes a certain threshold in their radicalization, they are extremely difficult to deradicalize fully or to the point that they do not consistently remain threats.
This matters here because extremism is a universal threat with varying ideologies. Today’s GOP platform as illustrated by their actions, is easily defined as an extremist threat to our republic. The overwhelming majority of Trump-era Republicans will largely remain extremist in their thinking and continue to vote for GOP violent extremism. There is no foundational evidence that they will recover any more than the countless individuals who’ve been through deradicalization programs.
It’s quite clear that we have little organized leadership within the resistance, that strategizes, plans and has successful operational experience under their belt. It sure as hell isn’t the DNC. They are already months behind in operations for the midterms and with no discernable plan. We must do this ourselves.
The GOP and their administration are already well into disrupting the midterm elections via a wide variety of methods. If we do not stop them now and especially in November, our odds of success drop dramatically. I will add that all of the tweets, posts, news articles and pundits claiming that scores of Republican voters are abandoning ship, are far closer to cheerleading than fact. Republicans, despite a very poor economy, war, loss of healthcare and social safety net programs, a majority of GOP voters still hold favorable opinions of their dear leader and the GOP’s anti-American ideology. This tells us that all of the facts and attacks we are making against this regime, are not doing us enough good. So long as we are reactively protesting the GOP’s daily attacks on us, we are not spending time employing an offensive strategy, as if we had one. We must go on the offensive with our own narratives instead of just scampering from one heinous Trumpian act to another.
The bottom line to this section is that Republicans will still vote Republican, because they are brainwashed. We will not change their minds. Our effort must be focused on turning out the apathetic or frightened voters. Only enormous hordes of anti-GOP voters will get the job done. Hungary’s historically high voter turnout, is what turned the tide for the Hungarians in freeing themselves from 16 years of the pro-Putin, Orban’ administration. Turning out massive numbers of voters would do the same for us here in the US.
Secondly, Trump, his voters, his party machine and their oligarchical billionaires have most of the conventional cards for success in an election. They have the money, power, courts, congress, federal law enforcement and the ability to censor much of our dissent. What they don’t have, are the numbers, the intense frustration of honest American voters and true patriotism.
The FOX News crowd has been dining exclusively on historical revisionism for over three decades. The GOP voting base is ignorant of not only our history, but what’s in our constitution. They no longer even care if their precious Republican party is violating the constitution or regularly breaking laws. They have basically built their beliefs on thin ice, while that the resistance has the full weight of reality, knowledge, our history and what it means to be an American as the thick, hard-frozen ice that will support us on our patriotic path. This is our one advantage and its a big one, as long as we can begin coordinating our plans and infusing apathetic voters with our will to restore our republic.
With all of the tools at the GOP’s disposal, they will continue rigging the midterms and if that isn’t enough, there is no limit to what the administration will do in order to win in November. If you remember nothing else from this essay, remember the last sentence in bold type.
Finally, it is important to realize how dire the situation is for honest, law-abiding Americans. All over the world, most nations have experienced a civil war, revolution, periodic challenges to their style of government etc. Here in the US, it has been 161 years since the US civil war ended. We’ve forgotten what it means to be threatened by such acts. We have had the good fortune to live in a nation where we generally expect people to follow rules, the law and our constitution. We’ve grown accustomed to some part of government solving our problems and coming to the rescue, regardless of the threat or challenge. We have forgotten the price of liberty. No one is coming to our rescue and the sooner that we accept this, the sooner we can all come to grips with the reality of our situation.
The most succinct expression of our situation is that; The Trump administration supported by the GOP and their elite wealth backers, will stop at nothing to ensure their success in the midterms. They are cornered by their own actions and therefore more dangerous. We cannot allow them to wield their long list of powerful tools of oppression against our constitutionally guaranteed right to a free and fair election. A peaceful (preferably) revolution may be one of the best options to protecting November’s election, hence our republic.
Revolutions don’t generally happen overnight. I write this essay so that we can all begin considering where we will stand when it comes time to stand against the tyranny of this Republican administration. Revolutions are born in our hearts and in our minds, precisely as our revolution against British demonstrated. Our modern revolution isn’t to do as the Republicans are doing, dismantling American democracy, but to reclaim it from their greedy outstretched hands. Throughout American history, there were always those who stood in the breech to defeat tyranny. Their DNA is our DNA, historically speaking. Two hundred and fifty years of our servicemembers, have given their last full measure of devotion to our nation, just to preserve its values. I will be damned if I will allow their sacrifices to have gone for nothing.
We can do this and with every intention of making this a peaceful revolution. This is my goal although we should all know by now that Trump and the GOP will do anything it takes to stay in power, up and including violence. Still, Americans have never backed down from tyranny before and is highly doubtful that we’ll start now. It won’t be easy… but if we take on this revolution, we will prevail.
Onward,
Paul
Thank you, Paul, but I have to say it was the kind of thing that's so hard to read. I'm in my seventies and have so much more on my plate than I ever anticipated when younger. My country's turmoils just sadden/anger me every day. I hope I can be strong enough for what's to come...