An Opportunity for Reformation

Oh, how different the landscape of the country and the broader world would be today had the bullet been one centimeter to the right.

We’ve found ourselves in a brief window, one where we can walk back what has become a boiling volcano, one fueled by vitriol designed to force individuals into collectivist tribes for political gain.

Identity politics, the idea and political strategy as old as time that reduces people from human beings into groups based on race, sex, religion, creed, and political ideology, stripped of all individuality and agency, needs to die with the July 13th rooftop shooter.

It would be hyperbole, a gross exaggeration to attribute the acts of an insane gunman to broader, generalized swaths of American people. While millions hate Trump, only a tiny deranged fractional minority would act on it. However, it is fair to “Notice” the words and actions that have laid the kindling at the feet of the current political landscape.

Lying to the American people, whether the media or politicians, that Donald Trump is Hitler and that he will destroy American society has consequences. Whether one loves, hates, or is indifferent about Trump, the man was already president for 4 years, we’ve seen him with the power of the position and it was mostly business as usual with the exception of less war and cheaper groceries.

To cite just a few examples. From the President of the United States Joe Biden, “Donald Trump is a genuine threat to this nation He’s a threat to our freedom. He’s a threat to our democracy. He’s literally a threat to everything America stands for.”  Once more, “Trump poses many threats to our country: The right to choose, civil rights, voting rights, and America’s standing in the world. But the greatest threat he poses is to our democracy. If we lose that, we lose everything.” Biden now taking it a step further beyond just Trump and characterizing half of the country as an “extremist movement that does not share the basic beliefs in our democracy” ““Their extreme agenda, if carried out, will fundamentally alter the institutions of American democracy as we know it.” To the credit of our President, this is but tame compared to the thousands of articles and comments made by media and politicians referring to him as Hitler and his supporters (half of the country) as aiding and abetting fascism.  

If someone were to take these comments and this rhetoric at face value and actually believe that a presidential candidate will usher in an age of fascism, creating concentration camps and enslave a nation and or races of people, why would you NOT kill that man? One life to save millions, one might consider the shooter a hero.

But this isn’t the case. It is a strategy to accrue, sustain, and gain power. Divide people into factions, tell them they are perpetual victims, and gain power over them by cos-playing the role of “The Great Liberator.”

The purpose of this piece is not to exclaim, “Trump 2024!” “MAGA!!!!” The purpose is to say enough is enough. As a society, as a country, it is time to become the adults in the room and stop allowing the inmates to run the asylum. Your media, your politicians, play you for a fool by stimulating the strongest emotional response, fear, to emotionally manipulate you into ceding power and control to an establishment that detests you.

You are not a democrat, you are not a republican, you are not liberal, you are not conservative, you are not white, you are not black, you are an American citizen which means you have struck the cosmic lottery by inheriting the most relatively free and prosperous society to ever exist in the history of the world. A brief window in time where all citizens are equal under the law while the default history of the human race is slavery and despotism. Every other personal characteristic is mere details. Reject the instinct to become tribal that is being thrust on you by the marionette show that seeks to concentrate power through their puppet, the media. The media that does nothing but lie to you, manipulate you into loving your slaver.

This establishment, a structure that liberals of the 60s and 70s protested, otherwise known as the “Deep State” to Trump supporters, could be described as a bureaucratic body consisting of an unholy alliance between the national security state, military-industrial apparatus, and class of corporate elitists who only ever grow in scope, influence, and power over us. This cancer weaponized judicial power to raid, prosecute, and convict the former president and the leading candidate of the 2024 election for the horrific crime of a bookkeeping error as it relates to paying a prostitute hush money. So just to be clear, we went all the way from “He’s an agent of Russia committing treason” including months of congressional hearings only to produce evidence manufactured by the establishment that proved to be false, alllllllll the way to the great crime he committed is a hush money payout to a porn star?

Democrats, in the part of you that you dare not speak of out in public, do you believe that if he was not running for president, winning in the polls, and a threat to democrat power, he would be tried and convicted for a victimless crime that no one actually cares about? Is it possible, that an unprecedented trial and conviction, one in which laws were re-written to be tried at the state level and beyond the statute of limitations has “Some” connection to the fact that democrats in power have had an underwhelming (Charitably) record these last three years and Trump is dominating swing states and is likely the winner of the 2024 election? Possible? No?

I would have loved that same enthusiasm for Bill Clinton, a frequent flyer aboard the Lolita Express who avoided all inquiry into his relationship with the world’s most notorious sex trafficker because he is on the side of the establishment’s protected class.

The truth is you know it’s bs but you are fine with it because “It gets rid of him and then we can return to normalcy.” I am not unsympathetic to this notion and it does not make you a bad person, it makes you a hypocrite, respectfully. A person who champions equality under the law through individual liberties (The definition of liberal) and wants to “Defend democracy” does not support abuse of power to jail a political opponent on victimless crimes while maintaining ideological integrity. Once you have handed over power and precedent to turn a constitutional republic into a banana republic, there is no putting that genie back into that bottle once the orangeman leaves. But that didn’t work, did it? The more the man is made into a martyr the more deafening the cheers for him become. When media assassination and judicial assassination fail, the next logical step for a homicidal maniac is an actual assassination. But now even that failed and he has been gifted the hardest picture since 9/11 and his base has now increased by the gaining of more and more centrists.

So now what is the establishment, politicians, and the media to do? Do you keep ratcheting up the vitriolic language and the misuse of power? Or do you take a step back and acknowledge this has gone too far and that it is perhaps time to take your foot off the accelerator before we drive off the proverbial bridge?

Trump is not a fascistic dictator, more accurately, Trump is a symbol, a middle finger from the populist working and middle class to an establishment, an “Anointed” class of people in the bureaucratic superstructure and media that tell his voters “You’re a deplorable racist who is too stupid to be burdened by freedom, instead, give us the power over you because we know better for you and your family than you do for yourself” while enriching themselves in wealth and power at the direct expense of you the citizen. While the public has been fixated on ridding the political landscape of Donald Trump, we’ve allowed our currency to become overinflated, we botched covid, we’ve incentivized and subsidized two wars, and we’ve turned our border into the world’s largest turnstile. Vote for Trump, don’t vote for Trump, I don’t give a shit, but it’s time to take the blinders off, folks.