What the fuck do we do now?

Yeah, I'm gonna talk about this.

Pictured here: A signal that was also utilized extensively by leftists in 2016, which is something to think about.

There's freedom to and freedom from
Freedom to run from everyone
Well, what I did is what is done
The baptist in me chose to run
But if there's still time to choose the sun
I'll choose the sun, I'll choose the sun
I'll run it back, I'll choose the sun
I'll run it back to everyone
If there's still time, I'll choose the sun
And I'll run it back to everyone

'Cause I was a sprinter then
Dying to see it end
I was a sprinter then
Dying to see it end
- Torres, "Sprinter"

I had most of another, completely different thing written for today, not especially topical or of-the-moment.

Maybe this is better. Maybe it isn’t. I don’t know.

For those of you not from the United States, I hope this isn’t too boring. I won’t be offended if you don’t find this interesting or skip it altogether. I’m going to display typical American arrogance, though, when I say that as goes America, so goes the world: if the trajectory our country is on continues towards a fall, the repercussions will be felt across the world, very much for the worse, even in places where most people don’t like us or don’t spend any time at all thinking of us. If ever the phrase “too big to fail” was valid, America would be a singular example.

What seems like quite a while ago now- early this year, which depending on your perspective may not be incredibly long ago- Brothermouth and I noticed on one particular day of seeing news and news commentary that there were a surprising amount of things that seemed, well, GOOD; not great, but events that marked reversals of numerous forces that seemed to be the dominant agents of a truly awful future that injected feelings of dread, frustration, anger and despair into most of our days.

I honestly don’t remember what the specific things were that day, simply that there were actually critical things being said in the MSM about COVID policy and vaccine mandates AND a dramatic legislative reversal of fortunes for some really odious woke policy like child grooming AND an upset victory in a state election somewhere that suggested people were getting really fed up AND someone in the MSM taking an actual shot at Brandon regarding his competency.

It wasn’t a momentous day, it was simply that there coincidentally happened to be a whole bunch of “a particular flavor of bullshit suffered a small but explicit L today” stories all at once that felt out of step with the relentless “the Party wishes to inform you that you have already been defeated” march of the narrative.

Like I said, as far as watching the news, it was a really good day.

I said something to the effect of, “holy shit, it’s like a bunch of people woke up to a bunch of stuff all at once.”

Brothermouth replied, “things are going to get better. But first they’re going to get worse.”

There have been a handful of other days like that over the past few months. There have many more depressing, stultifying, “you have already been defeated” days. The days that I’m kept extremely busy with a project or catastrophe on the farm and only have the energy for a little bit of entertaining TV or a book or video game in the evening are the best, in this regard- though sometimes even on those days, a voice in my head says, “just because you’ve taken your mind off it, doesn’t mean it isn’t still happening behind you.”

When I initially decided to write a substack, I had intended my first articles to be a series entitled, “What I Learned From The Pandemic.” I will write it, eventually. It’s the big realizations that have come to me in just the past few years- which only happened because of what happened to the world after COVID began- about my own nature and facts of life that were previously able to go unconsidered or avoided.

Yesterday, another one finally sunk in, and I don’t blame you if you think it was stupid, naive, or self-deluded that it took this long, because it was nothing less than textbook denial:

I finally- without reservation- understood that nothing will ever be the same again.

(I put that in bold for myself- so it will occupy a bigger place in my unconscious and be less likely to fade.)

Even if American society overcomes the existential threats that cover it on every surface, we will be a different society, as likely to be changed for the worse (albeit not utterly destroyed this time) as for the better. We will be scarred and not the same nation, just as we were after the Civil War, 9/11, and every other time we were all forced to face actual or implied threats to our very existence as a society.

Even if I got my wish and every COVID ringleader- every public health figure and politician that embraced tyranny- were hung from streetlights or flagpoles or trees tomorrow, and we had a Germany 1945 “this can never happen again” moment, it would not be 2019.

But this post isn’t about COVID, and COVID isn’t really about COVID- in America or anywhere else, really. COVID was a boil that rose to America’s surface, but it was just the visible pox from a rot that was already well underway.

COVID was an opportunity but there was already deep evil waiting for that opportunity; otherwise, COVID wouldn’t have mattered.

America does whatever the fuck it wants; always has, always will (even if its people may no longer do so). Just as we remain bafflingly obsessed with deeply destructive and oppressive mandates and belong to an increasing minority of nations that do so (most of whom are pretty awful company to keep), we could just have easily been the only nation in the world that said, “no thanks, Italy, China, WHO, we’re good on the masks and vaccines thing, that isn’t consistent with our Constitution or values” and while we probably would have been widely criticized for our selfish, narcissistic behavior- as we have always been throughout history which has never stopped us doing anything- we would have just as widely been quietly (or loudly) admired, especially by the citizens of the most restrictive nations- for sticking to our values of liberty and “getting away with it” in the end. Some people would even love us for it.

Pictured here: White supremacists in Hong Kong sending coded messages using symbols of hate to American white supremacist groups while committing anti-Asian hate crimes.

But we didn’t do those things, because we already had a huge network of totalitarian-minded officials, leaders, and their largely-unthinking followers that were already well on their way to smashing due process, the democratic process, language, privacy, individual freedom, and just about everything else that is distinctly American.

COVID was just another George Floyd, Twin Towers, mass shooter, 1/6 protest, subprime mortgage crisis. It was maybe the biggest such opportunity in almost a century, but it didn’t start us down a road. It just put its foot on the gas.

I suspect that everything I’ve said so far is just serving up red meat to carnivores. I’m not probably not saying anything shocking or challenging for this community.

Here’s where maybe I am.

Pictured here: Insurrectionists insurrecting. I drink coffee.

I titled this post “What The Fuck Do We Do Now?” in reference to a few topical things: the historically-unprecedented graphic and melodramatically-executed raid on former President Trump’s private home and the Inflation Reduction Act which- if passed in August- is well poised to drive us further into a confirmed recession and has more to do with massive spending and subsidy of dystopian climate change agendas than inflation EXCEPT maybe for the part where the IRS will roughly double in size with 86,000 more agents- 70,000 of whom will now be armed (with munitions that the IRS has, apparently, already bought).

But really, a question that I’m noticing filling the space around us more and more is, “Are We Ever Going To Do Anything?”

The United States, like some other former colonial states, was founded by revolution against its mother country, Great Britain. While historians can devote entire lifetimes of work discussing the details and nuance of the causes of the American Revolution, the broad strokes are familiar to the decreasing number of us that received a solid education in basic American history in primary school.

By any reasonable standard, the grievances of the American colonies- which led to a protracted, oftentimes desperate, and deadly war for independence- pale in comparison to the grievances which the American people might lay against their federal government.

A federal law enforcement agency with broad powers has been visibly harnessed for years to persecute political enemies in the same style of- as Trump presciently put it days before his home was raided- “a Banana Republic,” while simultaneously explicitly ignoring and abetting the corrupt and criminal behavior of political allies that has injured the American people.

Intelligence agencies continue to expand and grant themselves greater and greater unelected power, and nearly all of this expansion appears leveled not at enemy states or foreign actors but towards Americans themselves, who find a greater and greater number of our nonviolent behaviors becoming compared to or explicitly labeled seditious or terroristic, prompting unrestricted surveillance of our daily lives without criminal charge or due process.

The pursuit of a fanatical ideology whose arms have reached into every branch of government, military, and public office, within whose dictates nearly every American may find him or herself guilty, one way or another, of an original sin for which there is no absolution, justifying policy that has fueled ever-greater hatred and division as well as the dismantling of public education as a nonpartisan tax-funded public good to prepare children for economic survival and good citizenship.

The undemocratic declarations of multiple “emergencies” justifying the radical reimagining of the social contract between leaders and governed, the renegotiation of personal freedoms and rights under the law previously understood to be above debate or exception, and the execution of these “emergency” policies leading to unparalleled social, economic, and public health destruction whose critics are silenced, threatened, or legally destroyed.

The use of these continuing emergency powers to COERCE LAWFUL CITIZENS INCLUDING CHILDREN TO ACCEPT MEDICAL TREATMENTS THAT HAVE CAUSED INJURY AND DEATH.

The continued and escalating effort to disarm lawful citizens while simultaneously expanding the size and armament of government agencies empowered to kill American citizens in the course of their functions.

These sound like the actions of an occupying foreign state against the civilian population of an enemy defeated in warfare- hateful, retributive, cruel, enacting without pretense a relationship between leader and governed where there is no expectation of trust or benevolence.

They sound like the actions of wardens and guards being granted broad powers to oversee a colony of dangerous, unstable, immoral inmates who have no expectation of agency.

We are being treated like criminals before we have broken laws, and watch as laws are made to make us criminals.

We are being treated like enemies of “the people” when WE ARE THE PEOPLE.

This stuff makes the Tea Act look like a ticket for jaywalking.

And we’ve done basically nothing about it in a practical sense.

So where the fuck is everyone?

If you look in the discussions of forums where such things are discussed, there’s an awful lot of blackpilling going on, usually with a mean, vicious, bitter tone:

“Lol yeah you talk a lot when are you gonna go shoot <whoever> with ur AR15 lol didn’t think so”

“Lol see how far you get larping revolution you will be crushed in seconds”

“I’m smarter and wiser than all of you and shake my head sadly at your childish and stupid talk of any form of unlawful resistance, which is completely futile, I laugh at you from my position of elevated submission/have an intricate secret solution I will not explain.”

(If any quietly unwelcome guests here are rubbing your hands and sporting a sadist boner waiting for me to, any moment now, explicitly endorse, encourage, or instruct anyone in the commission of criminal acts, you’re out of luck. I’m very smart and know exactly what line I may walk up to. This does not, of course, stop you and your friends from moving the line- go ahead. I’m not afraid of you anymore.)

You might almost think this subculture of despair is deliberate counter-intelligence intending to goad stronger wills into threatening unlawful behavior and weaker wills to go to bed and cry. But it isn’t. Just like the historic evils that arose from COVID, it doesn’t require any mysterious, unknown cabals (the entirely non-mysterious, quite visible cabals will do just fine) or devil worship.

This is the normal distribution curve of how humans respond to misery.

At the left end, religious conversion to the source of misery (“Mao’s 1,000th speech finally made sense to me!”). In the big hump in the middle, lots of cognitive dissonance, denial, and rationalization to keep your internal thoughts as unchanged as possible (we’ve always been at war with Eastasia). At the right end, completely uncontrollable rejection (“Give me liberty or give me death”).

Revolutions start somewhere on that end, and gradually creep towards the middle of the curve until a critical mass occurs.

So why aren’t, as the smug blackpills say, all the revolutionaries going out and shooting <whoever> with their fully-semi-automatic AR-47s that shoot 30 clips a minute and cripple their own users?

Are they all scared of Brandon and his nuclear missile-firing F-15s?

Are they all actually a bunch of teenage boys playing Minecraft in their mom’s basement?

No.

I see three reasons:

ONE, enough people aren’t uncomfortable enough. This is not to say that the past three years have not dramatically (and in some cases, literally) beaten the shit out of millions of Americans and stolen their lunch money, or that the years before that which were also characterized by creeping totalitarianism didn’t have their abuses. They did. But the fact remains that we are a wealthy, prosperous nation which until recently was enjoying a robust economy, and additionally, people didn’t necessarily connect their misfortunes with government overreach or abuse- but you can be sure that with each livelihood lost, each vaccine death, each mega-audit by new IRS SWAT teams rendering a middle-class family homeless (suspiciously shortly after expressing certain sentiments on social media, no doubt), people will connect the dots.

Keep making people actually hungry, homeless, and exploited, though, and see what happens.

TWO, real revolution or big, regime-changing dissent requires organization, and that requires some form of leadership. There is presently no unified face of resistance to escalating government tyranny- individuals oppose a varied and diverse selection of specific policies that hurt them or offend their values, but few are formally affiliated. This is the area in which the aggressive expansion of intelligence and police agencies to surveil and criminalize Americans is concerned- keep people from expressing dissident views publicly so they can’t attract supporters, lock potential leaders or organizers in jail for new crimes (redefine/expand terrorism, “hate crime,” incitement, etc.). It’s many times harder to scare people who are already organized than it is to prevent them from doing so in the first place.

Given the way modern media and communication works, this effort is impossible, and the channels are so fluid that the more you tighten your grip, Tarkin, the more star systems will slip through your fingers. The people doing this are either blind to how tyrannical they look or think that the war is already done and don’t care about pretense.

Either way, I assert that sufficiently unifying revolutionary leadership isn’t a question of “doesn’t exist,” but “hasn’t incubated yet.” Maybe one of those people is reading this, right now.

THREE, whether justifiably or not, patriotic Americans still largely have faith in their democratic processes and rule of law, and don’t WANT to have to do it the other way. Even the American colonies clung, to the last, to the hope of reconciliation with Britain over armed conflict. (“…we have appealed to their native justice and magnanimity, and we have conjured them by the ties of our common kindred to disavow these usurpations, which, would inevitably interrupt our connections and correspondence…”) We also place great value (if dwindling faith) in our electoral institutions- it is ingrained in our culture to see voting as a fair and accurate reflection of public will, and it’s existentially uncomfortable for Americans (who purport to like America) of any political stripe to view the process otherwise.

This is an important one, so I’m going to repeat it, especially for the benefit of any unfriendly ears out there: Americans are very unlikely to unlawfully revolt if they believe they can effect change democratically. Strip away enough pretense of democracy (by expanding the number and power of unelected officials) or infect enough actually-democratic institutions and Americans will not be able to convince themselves any longer, hope against hope, that you are not tyrants and that there is only one escape from you.

At this moment in history, I cannot predict how the current crisis of America’s existence as we know it will unfold. If we are destined to declare war on ourselves, we must understand that there will never be a time when victory is assured, that there is no war without collateral damage, and that America will never, ever be the same again.

But it already isn’t. And maybe the reason more people haven’t mobilized is because we’re still in denial of that fact, or we haven’t finished mourning what was, for many of us, a freer and more hopeful past.

I’ve adopted a new mantra that has helped me get through the days:

Be patient.

Be attentive.

Get strong.

---

An eleventh I know, if needs I must lead
To the fight my long-loved friends;
I sing in the shields, and in strength they go
Whole to the field of the fight,
Whole from the field of the fight,
And whole they come thence home.
- Havamal (Bellows) 157