Special to L. Neil Smith’s The Libertarian Enterprise

Everywhere you turn these days, the term “civil war” is on everyone’s lips.

We know the left WANTS one, both because they tell us they do, and because, true to their mechanic of projection, they tell us it’s the “right” that wants the civil war, and latch onto the craziest things, like Hawaiian shirts, which men of certain portliness wear, as a sure sign we’re now wearing a uniform and we “want a civil war.”

The thing might be unavoidable, of course, since they’re trying so hard—and I’ll explain WHY they’re trying so hard in a minute—but my earnest question to those on the right doing things like posting memes of the Founding Fathers with “my homies and I would already be stacking bodies” (Which is historically wrong. They put up with a lot more shit than we have. The Road to the Revolution was loooong. You only hear about “relevant precipitating incidents”, but it was a long time before Americans snapped. This has been true in every war, btw.) is “WHY would you give the left what they want?”

Have they been alive in this world at the same time I have? Because I don’t recall a time that what the left wanted wasn’t good for them and bad for everyone else.

In this case, the left needs a civil war. They need to destroy civilization, control the news again, and install a totalitarian regime where no dissent will be allowed. Yes, they’re trying to get it by means of censorship, but if that were working, they wouldn’t be so hot to trot.

The most baffling thing about what I’ll call “The dogs of war” on the right is that it doesn’t stop with circumstances. No, seriously. Before 2016, they wanted to burn it all down. (To an extent, I DO understand that, by the way. Because after Obama, Hillary would have put an end to us. It doesn’t mean going out in a blaze of glory was the smart choice for us and for the future. But it was understandable.) Then Trump won, and they REALLY wanted to burn it all down. Uh? You have the president, the house and congress. Yes, embattled. What, you expected it to be a fairy tale and the dragon imploded? But still, you’ve shown you have the ability to change with the system you have…. and you want to blow it all down? And now they want to burn it all down….

At which point do they realize that whatever is driving them is not the current political situation? And that maybe what apparently are called “black pillers” are not people who have our society’s best interests at heart?

Has the time leading to Trump’s election taught you nothing? All the people running around, approvingly talking about how racist he was, who disappeared right after the election….. YOU THINK THEY WERE REAL? YOU THINK THEY WERE AMERICAN? YOU THINK THEY WERE ON THE RIGHT? Are you out of your minds?

That’s the beginning, but there are other things. Like the insistence that our loss of the rule of law is unprecedented. That cancel culture is unprecedented. That our colleges are uniquely infected.

Every time I hear this—and often it is from a leftist who is changing—I want to post this:

 

Look, I do realize I see things a certain way, because of where I was born/grew up. But I’ve lived here most of my adult life.

The shock was not coming here as an exchange student, from a country dominated by the left where education taught the splendors of communism and my suddenly enjoying the land of the free. The shock was realizing your left was a lot like our left—just more veiled—that the history books taught the same bullshit, only less openly, and that you had to keep your mouth shut about how bad the left/communism/socialism were or risk being treated as crazy or an idiot by all the bien pensant.

The number of times I told my host family “This is what is really going on” and they told me that stuff didn’t happen in America and I was being paranoid is in the hundreds. You know, stuff like sitcoms painting Reagan as a crazy person and practically campaigning for Carter? Yeah, stuff like that. They, btw, eventually came to see it. By then, at eighteen, I couldn’t figure out how people didn’t see it.

And yes, of course I kept my mouth shut in school and social situations. Because if even my host family thought I was insane, what would strangers think?

And when I came here as a young wife, it was no different. Yes, part of this were the circles I ran in, which were academic/artistic and technological on the husband’s side. But it was the same. When our dentist, during a session, campaigned for the democrat for mayor, and talked about the horrible racism of the GOP candidate (assumed because GOP) do you think I set her straight? She’d just decide I was racist.

As for cancel culture…. PFUI. With a cherry on top. Why do you think I kept my mouth shut in order to keep writing. It didn’t even take much. I know for a fact a liking for elephants as an animal was enough to make people suspect you of being a secret republican. And like the hunt for witches, once they suspected you, it was easy to find “corroboration.” You’re religious? Ah! Obviously an evil right winger who wants to kill all non believers, put women in chain, restore slavery, etc. etc. (The fact their image of the right has bloody nothing to do with reality never stopped them. Besides it was reinforced by entertainment, the news, everything.)

And yes, you’d get cancelled. I saw it happen. Granted, it wasn’t all politics. You could get cancelled for all sorts of reasons. Word went out that you were seen with so and so, who once called your editor a b*tch, and you were friendly with them. And no one would touch you again. Suddenly you were “difficult to work with” and no other editor would accept you.

Why not? There was an infinite supply of widget-writers, and what made you really successful was whether you got promo and push or not (to an extent not wrong, after selling to the net, btw. It just took them a while to figure out that they couldn’t make dog turds shine.) You were done. More importantly everyone was warned not to talk to you, read you, or even think about you. You were banished.

It was no different in other entertainment, academic, or even news or scientific circles. Cancel culture has been alive and well ever since I’ve been in this country. It’s just that most people weren’t aware of it. This is how we got the myth that only leftists were talented, because they were the only visible ones. The other ones disappeared. And though people tried to explain why civilizational product in general, from science to art, was going down, (the left loved the theory of the decadence brought on by capitalism), it never occurred to the average man on the street that the people in these fields were being judged and culled by criteria that had nothing to do with ability or merit.

Heck, even some people to the right of Lenin who had come in before me, when the left at least attempted to pretend they were even-handed didn’t see it. They bought into the myth it was all merit. BUT they knew too. Because they advised you not to be seen with so and so. They just never correlated it. And if I brought it up, I was told it was a conspiracy theory. So I didn’t.

It wasn’t a conspiracy, btw. As we’ve found out, a lot of fellow-travelers who all believe the same thing and head the same way is indistinguishable from a conspiracy. Also, the power to cancel and destroy was the stronger because they controlled the mass media, the press, etc.

But Sarah, you say, we’re seeing uniquely partisan persecutions, and attacks, and—

Really? Want to bet on that? I’m remiss on studying the history of the US, I confess, but while there have been better times—mostly while the west was open, which meant there were places where it was hard to track people, although that had its downsides, too—and worse times, partisan persecution, oppression, suppression of opinions, etc, have always been with us. They probably always will be, honestly. We are human.

It’s good to have the ideal of equal treatment under the law. It’s also important to realize that it’s never going to happen. Not completely. For various reasons, but mostly because no, ever judge is not going to be a paragon. Every police officer is not going to be a saint. And there are no angels among the populace, either. Miscarriages of justice will happen. To demand a world where there is no miscarriage of justice, ever, puts you in the same mind set as the idiots who think all men should be responsible because one of them is a rapist. That’s not how humans work.

But Sarah, look at how they’ve gone after Trump and his people….

Yeah. I’ll forgive that to the college kids who don’t know any better, but those of you who were old enough to shave at the same time I bought my first lipstick (at 17. I was a late bloomer) do not get that kind of pass.

It’s like you’ve forgotten the endless “scandals” of the Reagan administration, that kept them tied in lawfare. It’s like you forgot that aids to Bush were thrown in prison on bullshit procedural “crimes.” It’s like you don’t realize that compared to what Obama clearly has gotten away with, Nixon was a choirboy.

And by the way, I’m sure all of that goes back much, much further back.

But Sarah, the federal government didn’t have that kind of power in the past—

Oh, yeah? Read first-hand sources during WWI. Or WWII. Or read The Forgotten Man which is like a manual on how a deranged totalitarian president can screw this country. Ask yourself how we got where we’re now. How the crawl through the institutions happened. How they came to have control of our societal mechanisms. Go ahead. Ask yourself how we got here. And how long it’s been going on. (Heinlein said that the Democrats had been taken over by communists by the forties. That communists were in control where it counted. I see no reason to doubt him.)

Your ignorance of how bad things were in the past, doesn’t make this the worst things have ever been.

So, what has changed?

Well, it’ more visible now. Things have changed, indeed—changed at such a pace that it qualifies as “catastrophic change” in the last 20 years or so. 20 years ago? I’d be praying a lot and keeping my mouth tight shut. Also, most of the publishing establishment would think of me as a very domestic woman with no political opinions. One of those Latin moms, you know? Why? Well, because I would want my stories to continue being read.

Now?

Despite all attempts at keeping only the official narrative going, the dems are losing control. They’re losing control of the very institutions they worked so hard to control completely. They can cancel people to an extent, but people KNOW ABOUT IT. And that in itself, even if the canceling works, goes against them, because other people realize what’s going on.

Obama? They tried to paint him as a boy scout, pure as driven snow. But it didn’t work. Stuff leaked. No one but the most invested of the left believes that his administration was ethical and pure. Hillary? They tried to sell her so hard. SO hard. Media and entertainment burned their credibility to do it. (And it was planned, since at least Clinton’s first term, when I heard a bunch of editors talk about how long it would be before we COULD have HER, who was the real hard left in the family.) And it didn’t work. Enough stuff had leaked, that the stink clung to her. And their media lost a bit of their shine.

Their war on Trump? Sure, it’s been worse than anything I’ve seen. But part of it is that I’ve SEEN it. What was going on before, when we relied on the tainted media to report? Do you know? Because I don’t.

I know that most republicans before didn’t fight. I don’t judge them harshly, even those who clearly developed Stockholm Syndrome.

I don’t judge them because…. go up there and read that if things hadn’t changed the way they have in the last twenty years, I’d probably still be tightly politically closeted. Trying to embed messages in my books, sure, and probably getting more and more depressed because I couldn’t tell the truth (which would increase my silences) but …. What would be the point of telling the truth? Or of blowing things up and start shooting people? I’d just go down in history as a monster and be used to destroy people like me. Be used to increase the repression. (Yes, that is still in effect to some extent, though it’s changing. The fact the right refused to condemn Kyle Rittenhouse scared the living crap out of the left, which is part of the reason they started calling out the rioters. BUT his case is so clear cut defense, that the left had trouble selling it. And also, even so, a lot of the “not politically connected people” BOUGHT the idea he was a white supremacist murderer. So the stupid press still has some power.)

So I don’t judge the older republicans too harshly. And I do realize why Trump daring to fight back drives the left bonkers. It’s not just that he fights back, but that by and large he gets away with it, which is a reminder of how much power they have lost.

Guys, the very fact they’re OPENLY talking about stealing the election via fraud, is not a sign of their power, but of how they are losing power.

If they still had the power they had 30 years ago, all you’d hear is how the people would all rise up and vote for Biden. Seriously. And you wouldn’t even have a suspicion he’s demented as f*ck. Because you’d watch the debates and think it, but then you’d hear everyone talk about his acumen and wonderfulness, and you’d go “well…. I might be crazy.”

Yes, this year has driven me nuts, partly because I’m cracked due to past experiences. You don’t need to have been in physical battle to experience PTSD. And I think that’s hitting a lot of you too.

But what you have to realize is that the old establishment, from corrupt scientists to the news media, to the lefty governors, to academia and the schools went all in, did everything to create a crisis (it’s not a surprise. They were openly wishing for something to crash the economy. And for the idiots reading this, no, I’m not saying they created or made up the virus. I’m saying they directed the response in the craziest, most counterproductive way possible) in order for the mass media to regain their captive audience, and the left to sell their story.

And they’re failing. Across the country they are failing. What they succeeded in doing, in fact, was destroy what remained of the credibility and finances of the institutions they control.

So, yes, they want a civil war. That’s their hail mary pass. That’s their only chance. If we remain free and functioning as a society, they’re done, and they know it. This is also why they’re openly fantasizing about fraud.

This is not the behavior of people who subscribe to an ascendant, powerful philosophy. This is the behavior of ants whose hill has been dug up.

There is a book, and I wish I knew which, only I think I rather hated the book, and that it was one of those mainstream things that I read because I had to, which had an insane description that stuck with me.

It was talking about a little boy with a boil. The little boy was very proud of that boil, and watched it swell, and become huge and red, and admired the sheen of the stretched skin. Yeah, it hurt a bit, but look how big, how beautiful it was. And then someone (I don’t remember who) lanced it, and all this yellow, bad smelling stuff came pouring out. And he cried because the stuff was revolting, and he no longer had his big shining boil.

That is kind of what I’m seeing. All this bad smelling, yellow/green corruption you’re seeing? It was always there. In fact, the modern left have become uniformly horrible human beings because the cover of the institutions meant their corruption was never found, so they could do whatever they wanted with no fear. My guess is that the sewer-like effluvium we’ve not yet seen is much worse than we can guess at. Worse than anything we can dream of, because we are not by and large insane.

BUT just because you didn’t see it, weren’t aware of it before, or were briefly aware of it, and then it was covered over, it doesn’t mean things weren’t as bad before. I think they were worse.

The new tech was enough to lance the boil. Oh, not fully. But enough for us to see some of what’s inside. Enough for the left to be unable to keep it all secret, and pretend only crazy people oppose their program, and that they’re the best there is.

And that’s what scares them. If the boil is fully cut open, we’ll all see what it holds and it will heal. Sunlight and the disinfectant of people’s disgust will destroy their cozy corruption. They can’t stand it. They want to destroy our ability to open that boil more. And only a complete collapse of society will give them that power again.

This is why they’re pushing so hard for civil war.

The question is, why should we give it to them?

Yes, it might become inevitable. But that point is not now. Hell, the point might not come if they win through massive fraud. It might, though. Depends on what they do with that, and how far to North Korea they manage to take us. My guess is, like Obama, they’ll find they’re not as powerful as they think they’d be. And also that the levels of fraud will generate more resistance than they dream of. I could be wrong.

Am I saying there won’t be a time to fight? Who? Me? One of you gave my husband a shirt saying “I’m with the excitable Latina.” You know better.

I’m just saying that though I too long for a clear confrontation, one that will finally lay everything bare…. That’s not the way reality works. We’re not a in a movie.

Listen to those in the comments who have experienced civil war and insurrection. Or read (real) histories of the revolutionary war and the civil war. Once the shooting starts, things get murky, and high principles get lost.

Yes, we got very lucky with the revolutionary war, and to a certain extent with the civil war—it could have been worse, believe it or not, even if the changes to our government set up the seeds of the current mess—but do you want to roll for a third time? Before it’s absolutely needed? Really?

Sure, the time might come—and unfortunately not far off—to live free or die. But if the time comes it must be done with forethought and in the certainty it won’t lead to what we’re trying to avoid. Trusting the left to poke us into it, and thinking it will turn out all right is a fool’s game.

This is no time to go wobbly. If the republic can be saved at the ballot box, the cartridge box should stay shut. Full and ready, but shut.

In the end we win, they lose. Unless we start falling for their—weak—mind games.

Be not afraid!

 

Reprinted from According to Hoyt for September 21, 2020