ZMan outlines it for us.

This is a debate that has haunted conservative politics and it was something that haunted radical politics until the 20th century. Conservatives never solved the problem and it eventually ruined them. The reason is they committed to participating in a political system that leaves no room for conservative ideas. Once you sign onto the long list of left-wing taboos and mob rule, there is nothing worth defending. Conservatives became the tax collectors of liberal democracy.

For dissidents this is a bigger challenge. There is no solution to the problems of liberal democracy at the ballot box. Most Americans have no representation in politics as both parties are committed to destroying normal life. This fall the Republicans will win the election and everything will get worse. Whatever promises they have made will be broken on day one. They will set about giving the oligarchs whatever they want while pretending they are doing their voters a favor.

Even knowing this, people want to do something. This is even more true for dissidents who are more political than normal people. The reason you end up on this side of the great divide is you have engaged with politics and learned from it. Walking away entirely seems like quitting to most people. On the other hand, participating just empowers the people who want you dead. This is the dilemma that ruined the conservative movement and haunts the dissident right.

This leaves only one option and that is building a counter culture. Channeling activism into building a parallel society bridges the gap between ideas and activism. In a way, this is what we see globally with the alliance of non-Western powers. China, Russia and India want to create a parallel system that can challenging America. The same thing has to happen domestically. It is a bigger challenge for obvious reasons, but parallelism is the only way forward short of revolution.

Which would seem to indicate that there is in fact NOT “only one option,” would it not? My pickery of nits notwithstanding, in Z’s next post we’re reminded of another crucial truth.

Probably the most interesting race thus far is in Ohio, where you have three flavors of populists running for the open Senate seat. There is an old boomer running as if it is 1985 but he is rich and has party support. There is Josh Mandel, who will quickly morph into Lindsey Graham if elected. Then there is J.D. Vance, who is trying to run as a post-Trump populist. It is a three-way race at the moment and it reflects the currents within the Republican Party.

Gibbons will probably win the primary mostly because old white people will never come to terms with current realty. Instead, they will cling to the civic nationalist fantasy of voting our way out of the problems of democracy. The fact that just as many are easily fooled by Mandel hammers home this point. Both are creatures of the legacy talk radio culture. Only the actuarial tables will fix this problem within the Republican electorate.

None of this is to suggest that the Republican Party is about to become representative of the people who vote for it. That will never be allowed. The point of the party is to make sure the majority population has no representation in government. If that arrangement is threatened, then it is mail-in voting for every state. It is just increasingly difficult to keep the old grift going. The old Red Team versus Blue Team dynamic is collapsing.

We are at the start of a volatile period in politics. The great tide of discontent that will sweep the primaries this autumn will bring in all sorts of people. The war between the ruling class and the people will shift to Washington, where there will be more than a few Marjorie Taylor Greene types roaming the halls of Congress. The main result will be the final purge of the neocons from the Republican side. The process that began in the 1960’s is about to come full circle.

It’s high time the war between the Ruling Class and the people DID shift to Mordor on the Potomac, if you ask me. It should have been there all along, actually, and ought never to be allowed to get loose amongst the general population again. Think of it as what Jefferson (or John Philpot Curran, or whothehellever) was getting at with his insightful estimation of the price of freedom.

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