Not sure why anybody would want to.

What are hundreds of America’s biggest corporations doing as they browbeat the public to abolish the requirement of identification for voting? What are Twitter, Facebook, et al. doing when they prohibit people from sharing facts that are inconvenient to government policy or (and) the Democratic Party? What did banks do when they turned over to the FBI the records of persons who happened to have traveled to D.C. near January 6? And what about all those big retail stores—you know, the ones that the government designated “essential,” the ones that thrived under the lockdowns—what are they doing when they continue to demand that you wear masks on their property regardless of vaccination? What are colleges and universities, even K-12 schools doing when they deprive of opportunities young people who do not fit woke profiles? And what do all of them do when they dismiss complaints that they are violating your Constitutional rights by telling you that they are exercising their own private rights?

Are they simply fronting for the government or, specifically, for the Democratic Party?

Wait, you’re telling me there’s a difference?

Understanding what is happening in America begins with dismissing such silly questions. Focus, instead, on the fact that those who rule us in all these matters are essentially the same people. They are interchangeable, with near-identical interests, loves, hates, and tastes. Often, they are friends and colleagues, and are united about coercing whomever is not on their own sociopolitical side. Whether the institutions they control are public or private under our Constitutional system has ceased to matter. These persons are responsible for the sharp diminution in all manner of freedoms we have experienced since at least 2016, and especially since 2020.

Americans struggle to understand what is happening because we still regard ourselves as citizens, and imagine that those who run our republican institutions still respect them to some extent. We see persons whom the ruling class favors committing crimes with impunity, and complain of “a two-tiered justice system.” But this is not mere corruption. We see corporations wielding government powers and complain that power is being franchised to favorites. But these are not mere favorites of the regime. This is the new regime being itself. Such things are not deviations from republican legality. They are the assertion of oligarchic reality. This is oligarchic justice, oligarchic normality. The republic was yesterday. The oligarchy is today.

Conservatives’ congenital mistake is to try conserving something that no longer exists by supporting institutions that now belong to a regime so alien to republican life that it treats attempts at citizenship as crimes against the regime. And so they are. They call today’s American regime “our democracy.” It is “theirs,” all right, but not ours. It is a classic oligarchy.

I must admit that I’m constantly guilty myself of a classification error when it comes to what specific flavor of tyranny we’re now being strangled by, usually referring to it as Marxist, socialist, Communist, what have you—perhaps for convenience’s sake, or out of laziness, or just force of habit. As with the increasingly meaningless Left-Right dichotomy, everyone knows what I mean by it, so there’s no real harm done. Nonetheless, it’s linguistically and conceptually sloppy, a fact I’m well aware of. In truth, the most accurate name for Amerika v2.0’s current system would have to be fascism.

Oligarchy also meets the case well enough, being more or less a sub-branch of fascism itself, so I have no bone to pick with Codevilla to this point. But I’m about to.

What’s an Ex-citizen To Do?
First, stop pretending. Begin by rejecting—in heart and mind entirely, and publicly as prudence may dictate—the authority of the oligarchs who now control what used to be our republican institutions. Realize that you enjoy the rights God gave you only to the extent that your fellow ex-citizens recognize them, and that your only hope of continuing enjoyment lies in leaguing with them, on turning your back on the oligarchy and on effectively living republican lives with similarly minded people.

Citizenship is possible only when the many join together in the kind of mixed regime for the general good that our oligarchs rejected. Turning our backs to the oligarchy is possible for the twin purpose of rejecting un-republican rule and as the assertion of a new republican way of life. Citizenship happens when individuals join together under leaders of their choice to achieve common goals, both positive and negative.

Rejection of oligarchy is possible, even easy, if and when large numbers of persons do it together.

“Easy”? Oh, sure…right up until the moment forty masked FBI goons in full battle-rattle kick in your door in the wee hours of the night, then proceed to haul you and yours off to the Googlag™ for a lengthy stretch of retributive “justice” for your willful nonconformity. “Rejection of oligarchy” suddenly gets a lot tougher then.

Our oligarchs, having seen how easy it was to cower the majority of Americans to agree to the stupid, self-destructive practices of mask-wearing and lockdowns, having rejoiced in ruining the lives of small numbers of individual dissenters, believing that, under the media’s cover, their threats to crush opponents as white supremacists will forestall serious resistance, fantasize about applying the tools of the war on terror to America’s population. 

But no. Their success was due to what remained of the American people’s confidence in them. That is now gone. The oligarchs have the FBI and CIA, and the Pentagon’s generals. But who will risk his pension, never mind his life, for them? Who will risk anything for Kamala Harris, never mind Joseph Biden?

Wrong question, Angelo. The one we should be asking is: who will dare to risk his freedom, his financial well-being, and even his very life to defy them?

Biden and his Deep State puppeteers know that their success is due not to the American people’s—or anybody else’s—confidence or trust, and they’re not troubled in the least by it. Their contempt for the Slave Class is deep enough that our masters are perfectly fine with a continued grip on unlimited power based entirely on intimidation, oppression, and fear instead.