Attribute to L. Neil Smith’s The Libertarian Enterprise

Politics in our nation may seem to be confusing at the moment—a bewildering, surrealistic mess—with various individuals acting out a half-baked melodrama that appears to make no sense, but things begin to clear up quickly if we adopt another model than we have traditionally used to understand what’s going on.

First and foremost, after 225 years, the United States of America no longer have a two-party system, with each party demonstrating varying levels of moderation or radicalism and avoiding amything that looks like real freedom. It has given birth to a three-party system and, as science fiction author Frank Herbert (a surprisingly wise political philosopher) pointed out, the least stable configuration in politics is the triangle.

Today’s three political forces are these:

The Democratic Party, which is more or less equally divided between those who are violently insane, like the so-called “Anti- fa” rioters and those, like advocates of “political correctness”, who are simply crazy.

The Republican Party is a collection of stodgy, cowardly, pee- stained old men whose only tactic is to compromise unnecessarily. Nobody ever bothered to tell them that Mrs. Grundy (look her up) walked out on them long ago.

The third force is not exactly new to America, nor is it principally pro-liberty; it has always been there, simmering just beneath the surface, held down and held back by Republicans and Democrats alike. Presently, its partisans are being called “populists” but that is a very poor name, slapped on it by its enemies, for a group who simply wish to keep what they earn, keep what they have, and use it any way they wish.

None of these parties is particularly ideological in character, or guided by anything resembling philosophical principles.They actually seem to be proud of that. There might have been an effective fourth party today if the Libertarians hadn’t been destroyed by their own stupidity, ignorance, and timidity, which—to the chagrin of real libertarians everywhere—it has amply demonstrated in three successive general elections.

And now, Donald J. Trump, who has promised to be a representative and friend to the third force, has been elected the 45th President of the United States to the abject horror of every political parasite in the land. Everybody, friend or foe, with a camera peering at them wants to tell Trump what to do. They want him to give up his frequent briefings -- by which he stays in touch with the people who elected him—and stop tweeting, which may be the most attractive and useful feature of his administration. Above all, the media are like a mob of Catholic priests at the beginning of the Reformation, who were happily willing to torture and kill their flocks so that they could remain the only channel through which the Deity spoke. To all of them I would say, “If you want to help him, do as he asks you. If you don’t, sit down and shut up. The man knows what he’s doing. Give him the room to do it. He’s a builder—but he has to clear the ground first.”

Naturally, the Democrats, who despise the Productive Class as “deplorables”, and the Republicans, who imagine somehow that they’re better than he is, despise Trump for his unique style and tone. He speaks to working men and women in their own language. The Democrats have adopted a strategy: knock the opposition leaders off one by one, by any means that come to hand—or underhand. Taking out Roger Ailes first was a master chess move. If anybody could be said to have started this latterday revolution it was Ailes. He is one among many game-pieces removed from the board by the mere accusation of sexual misconduct, Bill O’Reilly was next. When I was young, you actually had to screw somebody to be accused of sexual misconduct. O’Reilly’s “crime”: he called some woman he admired “hot chocolate”.

Most ignominiously, even FOX News gleefully jumps on the dogpile with the savage leftist horde in their continuous nit-picking of the Trump Administration. What was the old saying, “With friends like these … ?” This is not a “media feeding frenzy”; it’s the round-heeled “press”, the news-floozies and gentlemen-of-the-evening wanking all over each other. And every time an “honest man” pops up, he’s accused of First Degree Lechery and lynched.

It says here that former Congressman, Speaker of the House, and Trump supporter Newt Gingrich “appalls” his fellow Republicans—who always seem to be appalled about something—when he commands them to fight or surrender. They don’t want to believe they’re in a war with collectivism and have been since about 1848. (I had a New York book editor like that, who believed he was a conservative but didn’t have an ounce of real fight or political insight in him.)

Fighting might best consist of depriving the other side of their leaders and operatives, beginning with Paul “Turncoat” Ryan, Jerry “Moonbeam” Brown, Elizabeth “Fauxcahontas” Warren, Maxine “Shallow” Waters, Crazy John McCain, Charles “Cockroach” Schumer, Nancy “Stretch” Pelosi, the incomprehensible Sheila Jackson Lee, Diane Feinstein (who is no Einstein), and anything at all named Cuomo.