Social Media, Civil War and the End of Liberty (Part 2 Defining the Sides)

 

In the previous installment we have seen how a steady diet of the artificial environment of social media, the consumption of which has increased dramatically with our enforced isolation, divides us and makes us ripe for manipulation by powerful forces. Those forces are driven by a desire for profit and control. The division they are creating by confining us each to our own reality while simultaneously physically isolating us from one another, prohibiting our common cultural traditions, removing our shared communal expressions and demonizing everything that makes us unique as a people is evident every time you ingest any media source.

They are brewing a cultural and civil war for the purpose of destroying once and for all the American ideal. The things is, as they have framed the narrative and described the players, they will win no matter what. What are the sides we see? It is us vs them, black vs white, Trump vs Biden, Democrat vs Republican, poor vs rich, Marxists vs conservatives, left vs right. We see a developing street war where riots, looting and physical intimidation and attacks are used to terrorize people into submission to an agenda. Black Lives Matter Inc. and Antifa are Marxist organizations cloaked in a message of racial justice and liberation. In cities where officials from mayors, council members and district attorneys sympathize or embrace this statist ideology they are allowed to riot, attracting a criminal element that cares nothing for the cause but has bought into the entitlement mentality and takes the opportunity to participate in the destruction and looting for purely selfish motives.

This, of course, has led to a backlash. People are not naturally Marxists They believe in private property and that the property they have accumulated through their hard work should not be stolen or destroyed by thugs. So there has been a pushback against the hoodlums, criminals and dupes. People want to protect themselves and their property. Marxists, by definition, believe in violent revolution. Therefore in a country with a strong belief in the right to keep and bear arms for protection, there was no question that violence would result. The shooting war has started.

So in this civil war, what does each side want? The Marxists want to overthrow the current system and replace it with communism where social justice and redistribution are the practical results of their ideology. In reality, as with every Marxist revolution, what they want is power and control, they want to be in charge of the vast wealth and power the American system has built and use it to reward themselves and their friends. Nothing more than thievery on a huge scale. These street fighters will soon find out two things. One, communist revolutions eat their own. Second, communism does not and can not produce wealth, it never has, and even the vast wealth of America will be quickly exhausted when the engine that produced it is dismantled.

What does the other side want? They want to preserve the status quo. They want to go about their business in peace, they want to see the flag respected, statues replaced and law and order restored. They want to see less political correctness while acknowledging the value of all people. They don't want ideas they don't agree with shoved down their throats while showing deference to the diversity of our nation. They want to return to the illusion that America is a place of justice, liberty and opportunity.

A civil war is about control of government. That being the case, neither side is going to win because it is the 'deep state' bureaucracy in our government and elite power brokers that exercise the real power in this country who are orchestrating all of this and no one is fighting against them. Are they Marxist ideologues? Some of them for sure, but the majority are interested in power for the sake of power, they are statists who want to cement their hold on their privileged status. The radicals at BLM and Antifa are never going to get control because they don't understand the balancing act required to keep the goose laying the golden eggs. The statists don't want to kill it, they want to keep it in its cage for without wealth, privilege is pointless; the elite will just be poor street thugs with little more than the people they terrorize.

So BLM and Antifa are never going to get a Cuban or North Korean style communist utopia but they will get most of what they want-radical redistribution, reparations of a sort, a pass on their lawless activities. The other side is never going to get what they want either because it is not in the interests of the powerful to do so. The illusion of America we all like to see through our rose colored glasses has not existed for decades. The status quo before 2020? A steady march toward totalitarianism that has picked up a lot of steam over the last thirty years and has become a runaway freight train over the last few months.

Do you see the point? All this division sown by politicians and amplified by social media and their manipulative algorithms is designed to keep us focused on hating each other instead of recognizing the real threats to liberty and justice. When the riots finally subside and the looting stops we will all breath a sigh of relief thinking we have won but we will still be subject to an increasingly totalitarian government. Street fighters, the rioters and looters, are just useful idiots, foot soldiers for the people really pulling the strings. When they are no longer useful they will be discarded but the puppeteers will remain. But that time is not yet, we have an election coming up.

President Trump has been the wild card in all this. He has neither the pedigree nor inclination to be part of the establishment, the “deep state.” In fact, he and those with him actually believe in the American ideal, in solving problems, in less government power. I will admit I was wrong about him. I thought he would be a Mussolini type leader but he has not become that kind of autocrat. He has cut regulations at a rapid pace, he has refused to exercise power, such a quelling the riots with federal troops, even when prodded to, he has tried to appoint judges who will stop legislating Marxism from the bench. He has called out the hypocrisy of the statists, pointed out their treasonous behavior and refused to be bought or play their game. Reagan had the love of country and libertarian leaning ideology the statists hated but he was not the pugnacious street fighter Trump is. Trump has shown it is actually possible to succeed against the swamp and work outside its parameters and worldview to actually accomplish important things. If Trump is allowed to succeed not just as an individual but as an inspiration for a revival of the American ideal it will delay, or worse, derail the statist's accumulation of power and money.

Success for the statists in this civil war is not the rise of BLM and Antifa to positions of actual power but the reestablishment of the status quo where the bureaucrats continue to accumulate power and the connected reap the profits. Where liberals and marxists in government, education, media and entertainment continue to implement their moral and political agendas unhindered. Where globalists continue to reap the profits of unbalanced trade and open borders. Donald Trump and his supporters upset that apple-cart. While his election was unforeseen and unbelievable his reelection is anathema. Even before his inauguration they plotted his destruction and that of anyone who supported him. They fabricated conspiracies, they propagated lies, they trumped up charges against him and his associates for four years. And yet he continued to successfully implement an America first agenda.

So the statists' implementation of totalitarianism that grew steadily under Clinton and Bush and accelerated under Obama is in jeopardy. For decades they have pushed their agenda piece by piece, enduring the occasional outcry or electoral defeat, but every time we have settled into the new normal. Moral issues like gay marriage and transgender rights to political issues like the growth of the surveillance state, the climate crisis agenda and fiscal insanity have all followed this pattern. President Trump has shown that the new normal is not set in stone, that it is reversible. For this he must be stopped and at any cost.

The coronavirus responce was unprecedented. Never before have we responded to a pandemic by shutting down the country and imprisoning people in their homes. President Trump had overseen an economy that was stellar in all aspects and the virus response destroyed it in a matter of weeks. No matter what he did in response to the pandemic, the narrative from the media and his other opponents was going to be negative. Next came the widespread and coordinated riots, looting and street violence, also blamed on Trump. What is yet to come will be even worse. Because the reality is we are, and have been, in a civil war for over one hundred years. It is not geographic, it is not left vs right, it is not BLM vs the militias. It has been, until the last few months, a cold war between the American people and the totalitarians who are occupying the government at all levels. And the American people have been losing, badly. Trump has come along and forced their hand, revealed their true nature and now the battle is out in the open and is being joined. But liberty will ultimately lose no matter the outcome of the election if we expend our energy on the fringes instead of the real enemy. In the next installment we will look at how the fight will play out over the next few months and how we are being groomed to accept defeat.