Giving the hornets’ nest a good, hard shake
Hoo BOY, but Peters has really put his foot in it with this one.
Things have probably never been more dangerous than they are today. At least, not since election day, 1860. Whatever the outcome of this election, it could result in something like what happened after that election.
Lincoln’s election was intolerable to the people of the South, which shortly after his election in 1860 began to form what became the Southern Confederacy and shortly after that, attempted to withdraw from what it, with cause, saw as a political system that not only did not represent its interests but which it saw, also rightly, as a system that could not represent its interests. That last being an important point rarely, if ever, discussed in the schools established by the government that forced the Southern states back into the “union.”
The North controlled the “union” politically and so actually because the North had the population and the money to dominate federal elections. And so the South had no way to redress its grievances within the construct of the “union.”
It was not the election of 1860, per se, that triggered the South’s attempt to withdraw but rather the realization that future elections would go similarly. What option does a minority have in a political system that is based upon majority rule? The choice is either acceptance of subordinate status and hope the master will be kind – or get away from the master.
It is exactly what the American colonies had done – and for same reasons and realizations – those “four score and seven” years before the election of 1860. Their successful attempt to withdraw from the union – with Great Britain – is celebrated by modern Americans, many of whom also think (if that is the right word) that the failed attempt by the people of the Southern Confederacy to do the same, for similar reasons and on exactly the same basis, in terms of the principle at issue – i.e., that of being governed by themselves rather than a distant people with whom they had increasingly little in common and who wielded political control over them that could not be redressed within the context of the “union” – was, somehow, a kind of crime.
And so, the Southern states – like the American colonies, which were also states – declared their political independence from the “union” and fought for it.
If today’s elections ensconce the power of the political Left, whether legitimately – in terms of the actual votes – or because the votes were jiggered with – the people who are not of the Left will have to face the awful realization that the Left is in perpetual control and that they no longer have any means, within the system, to combat it. That the oppression of the Left cannot be voted away.
It must be gotten away from – or submitted to. The latter being a condition as intolerable to those not of the Left as the subordination of the not-Left is to the Left. This is a matter of irreconcilable differences – and both sides know it, just as they knew it in 1860. Like a failed marriage, it is not what either party wanted at the beginning. But it is what it has become and there is no fixing it except by separating the estranged or forcing the estranged to endure one another in a state of mutual, endless hatred.
That’s about the size of it, yeah. His analysis is perfectly correct, from premise to conclusion, right down the line—and for that heinous atrocity, certain of us will never forgive him. Eric, bless his workaholic heart, has posted a sort of companion piece/post-mort today, which is also well worth a read.
The Bolsonaro’ing of Arizona – and America?
The reference being to the loss at the ballot box of someone who appeared to be far more popular than his opponent and certain to win. Just like the Orange Man.Until the votes were counted.
The Bolsonaro’ing of Lake being especially similar and even more suspicious in that her opponent was more than just her opponent. Katie Hobbs is also, conveniently, Arizona’s secretary of state, which means she is the state official who has legal oversight and so power over…Arizona’s elections. Including her own. This being kind of like having your estranged spouse’s attorney handle your divorce settlement. For this reason, Hobbs will never be acknowledged as the legitimately elected governor of the state, by millions of people in the state – even if a majority of people did vote for her rather than Lake.
This being catastrophic for “our democracy,” if those who say that cared about that.
What was on the ballot yesterday – and not just in Arizona – was the legitimacy of the system itself rather than who was running for office. The Left may have succeeded in diverting the “red wave” that had been predicted – and which in some cases, as in AZ, seemed certain. But it did so in such a way that the results will only further heighten suspicions that the fix was in, again.
Kari Lake wasn’t just ahead of Katie Hobbs in every poll. She was well-ahead of Hobbs in every poll taken since early October. How does a 3-4 percent lead (in the polls) become a 2 percent loss? Maybe because the polls were wrong. Or maybe because the votes weren’t right. Even if they were, many of those who didn’t vote for Hobbs will never believe the votes were right because of the fact that Hobbs was in a position to assure they were “right.”
Similar uneasiness percolates generally. With reason.
With GOOD reason, INDISPUTABLE reason, more like. Read both the linked pieces, they’re par for Eric Peters’ usual high standard of excellence.
It’s quite painful to have to admit it, but since Our Side always rakes the DemonRats for their extreme resistance to undertaking any honest self-examination after losing an election—a circumstance that’s become more and more rare with every passing biennial—seems to me that after yesterday’s Red Flop squib some soul-searching might well be in order for Our Side this time.
Atop the list of necessary adjustments is a rose-tinted misperception I used to complain about all the time back when Rush Limbaugh repeatedly touted it on-air: the idea that, as he always put it, America is a “conservative-majority nation.” Claptrap, pure and uncut, and the sooner we all wrap our heads around that fact the better off we’ll be. Really, how could any serious person imagine otherwise, after six-seven decades of a dismayingly successful Long March Through The Institutions, wherein several generations of American youth have been brainwashed into unquestioning acceptance of every tenet of hardcore Leftist dogma? If we ever truly were a “conservative-majority nation,” we damned sure are no such thing now.
Which, after yesterday’s debacle, leaves us right back where we’ve long been: standing before the fabled Cartridge Box, all agape and aghast at just how we might ever have come to find ourselves in this sorriest of passes. Attribute it to whatever you like—chicanery, apathy, outright fraud—but yesterday’s sad repeat of what by now has come to seem an eternal cycle amounts to inescapable confirmation of something we don’t wish to admit but have long known just the same.
Yes, Virginia, there really IS no voting our way out of this.
Update! Steyn agrees with me, and has for quite a while now.
At SteynOnline we have been marking our twentieth birthday by strolling back through the archives. (For earlier entries, see below.) This morning we have reached 2008, when there really was a wave – blue, as waves generally are, but augmented by many, many conservative commentators eager to repudiate the Bush years. Here is how I began that year’s morning-after column:
‘Give me liberty or give me death!’
‘Live free or die!’
What’s that? Oh, don’t mind me. I’m just trying out slogans for the 2012 campaign and seeing which one would get the biggest laughs.
My Republican friends are now saying, oh, not to worry, look at the exit polls, this is still a ‘center-right’ country. Americans didn’t vote to go left, they voted to go cool. It was a ‘Dancing With The Stars’ election: Obama’s a star, and everyone wants to dance with him. It doesn’t mean they’re suddenly gung-ho for left-wingery.
Yeah, whatever gets you through the night. Nothing cool about the “President”; no star quality about Senator Fetterman, as we must learn to call him. The Biden-Pelosi decrepit gerontocracy has dissolved your citizenship at the southern border and shriveled your horizons on all fronts from unaffordable gas to unavailable baby formula. And the fathead right will still be bleating their bromides about “a center-right country”. Whatever the country is, the voting machines are “center-left”. Back in the real world, one consequence of last night is that Trump is likely not to run again, and ol’ Joe is – mainly because he could have a Fetterman-sized stroke tomorrow and a state funeral at the weekend, and the Dems would still bet they could get him across the finish line.
“Senator Fetterman.” Hard to believe, ain’t it? But if there were any further evidence needed to show just how badly broken and corrupt America’s “election” system truly is, that alone ought to be plenty enough to convince even the most dewey-eyed Pollyanna currently extant.
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