being at home in
THE SOCIALIST STATES OF AMERICA
by
DAVID SOLWAY
______________________________
David
Solway is a Canadian poet and essayist (Random Walks)
and author of The Big Lie: On Terror, Antisemitism, and
Identity and Hear, O Israel! (Mantua Books). His
editorials appear regularly in PJ
Media. His monograph, Global Warning: The Trials of
an Unsettled Science (Freedom Press Canada) was launched
at the National Archives in Ottawa in September, 2012.His latest
book is Notes
from a Derelict Culture. A CD of his original
songs, Partial to Cain, appeared in 2019.
Trying to make sense of the tyrannical actions of many blue
state public officials, who have allowed radical insurgents,
looters and violent thugs to lay waste their cities, may leave
an observer in a state of some perplexity. People are being
harmed and murdered, property vandalized, areas set ablaze or
annexed by gangs of anarchists and hoodlums, and yet these officials
seem oblivious to the mayhem or openly support the marauders
in their acts of wanton destruction.
How
is this possible? Do they not realize they are not only abdicating
their legal responsibilities but alienating many of their tax-paying
constituents? There can be only two reasons for such civic delinquency.
On
the one hand, they must believe they have their citizens with
them. Most are Democrat voters, espouse leftist doctrines and
“social democratic” policies, and may well accept
that America must be remade in the image of a Marxist command
economy and single-party rule. Yet many of these people are
members of the affluent class, accustomed to their perquisites
and comforts, and presumably hostile to the prospect of losing
the privileges and opportunities from which they have profited.
They
may tire of watching their leaders painting streets instead
of governing or removing statues in the dead of night rather
than applying the law in the light of day. And having experienced
the destruction visited upon their cities, neighbourhoods and
places of work, and seen barricaded camps of tumult and coercion
treated as enclaves of liberty, one would assume they would
surely rethink their political convictions, cultural preferences
and voting habits.
Their
elected leaders must be aware of this, but remain untroubled,
suggesting another possibility that might explain the laissez-faire,
pro-violent behaviour of these mayors, attorneys-general and
state governors. Most do not seem to fear an epidemic backlash
since they are largely convinced that Biden is set to triumph
at the polls, which would provide them with carte blanche
to trample on the Constitution, abolish the Amendments that
hamper their activities, and impose something akin to totalitarian
rule upon the land. Subsequent elections would become formalities,
mere window-dressing. Speech would be even more rigorously policed
than it is at present, and what we quaintly call “political
correctness” will morph into totalitarian thought control.
But
in the unlikely event of a Trump victory, they will ignite a
revolution in the streets, cities and legislatures of the nation,
finally impeaching the president after years of trying and unleashing
a reign of terror which would make the attempted coup of the
last four years seem mild by comparison. In an article for American
Thinker, Diana Sitek notes that “the mob may now
constitute over 50% of the population, and no matter what the
outcome of the coming election is, they won’t step down.
If anything, another defeat will exacerbate their ire.”
In
other words, blue state officials feel they have nothing to
fear in pursuing their lawless activities. They enjoy the complicity
of their allies in the Democratic Party and the, so to speak,
Republican rump, the Deep State operatives, the heavily indebted,
woefully miseducated and unemployable millennials, the radical
feminists, Antifa, BLM and the assorted parasitic rabble who
also feel they have nothing to fear.
Might
there be a fly in the Democratic ointment? Tucker Carlson calls
the rioters “Biden voters”—an expression that
seems to be catching on and may not bode well for the Left.
As Thomas Lifson at American Thinker reports, “some
Democrats are openly expressing their fear that the rioters
are helping Trump,” concluding that the Democrats “are
riding a tiger. If they attempt to dismount, they will be eaten
by the tiger.” Perhaps the strategy of colluding with
the violence-prone “protesters” may backfire; nonetheless,
the majority of Democrat operatives seem to be in it for the
long haul.
And
why not? Democrat officials from local to state survey the national
scene and see sports teams changing their names to appear inoffensive;
people lobbying to replace the national anthem; Hollywood celebrating
its anti-Americanism with slanted, godawful movies; wealthy
corporations subsidizing domestic terrorists; outright traitors
to the flag sitting in Congress; generals embarrassing their
President; police chiefs kneeling before the mobs and religious
leaders washing the feet of those who would depose them; public
schools and universities churning out hordes of Leftist hoplites;
and the mainstream media and big digital platforms practicing
censorship, swaying elections and promoting insurrection.
In
brief, what these so-called public representatives observe is
a country submitting to the lure of Cultural Marxism, which
views the world in terms of interest groups, power relationships,
systemic oppression and endemic inequality, victim categories
and identity politics, with socialists as the great healers
and redeemers. From the perspective of the commissars, what’s
not to like?
Add
to this political scenario the Leftist COVID-mongers who, as
Angelo Codevilla shows beyond the slightest doubt, are engaged
in the usurpation of arbitrary political power by stoking public
panic, prolonging the lockdowns, constantly “moving the
goalposts” even when the famous “curve” has
not only flattened but become catenary, and collapsing the nation’s
economy in order to unseat President Trump. These blue state
authorities and their comrades in a Democrat-controlled Congress
are dedicated to establishing the new “new normal,”
which is to become the default position of everyday life leading
us, as Paul Gottfried writes, into the “new frontiers
of madness.”
In
a 1965 radio broadcast titled “If I Were The Devil,”
Paul Harvey foresaw the socialist plan to take over America,
which was as simple as it was methodical. The devil would begin
by subverting the churches and proceed, among other steps, to
educate authors to produce lurid literature, lard TV with dubious
movies, peddle narcotics, tranquilize the public with pills,
corrupt the schools, deify science, take from those who have
and give to those who wanted in order to kill incentive, and
caution against hard work, patriotism, moral conduct, and marriage.
And presto! We find ourselves living in the hell that is socialism.
The
devil’s program seems poised to bear fruit. Should this
be the case, and I suspect it is, we have a plausible explanation
for blue state public figures unafraid to violate their mandate,
estrange a portion their voters, and act in full view of the
nation like the petty tyrants they always essentially were.
They are the purveyors of the new regime of American socialism
of which, as Dinesh D’Souza baldly states in his recent
The United States of Socialism: “In principle,
no less than in practice, socialism is the ideology of thieves
and tyrants. As for the people who fall for the temptation,
they are connivers attracted by the rip-off scheme.”
These
thieves, tyrants, and connivers have every confidence that they
will shortly possess full control of their fiefdoms in the newly-formed
Socialist States of America. After all, if the plot succeeds,
it is soon to be their home.
