At the end of part II of our first book, “Unwashed Philosophy: A User’s Guide For Our Imperfect Union,” my writing partner Vassar and I offered up an approximately 5,000-word presentation on the evolution of America’s modern protest movement(s). We titled the chapter a mostly peaceful coup, and in that chapter, we walked readers through the 60s protest generation and the rise of the Civil Rights Movement and took a deep dive into the BLM and Antifa generation that confronted us in the final year leading up to the 2020 presidential election cycle.
We intentionally published that book not long after the first hundred days of the Biden Administration because we didn’t want to poison the waters of our Treatise designed to offer a history of how America came to be and the facts about the five millennia of knowledge and wisdom that informed the decisions our Founding Fathers made when they put this country together for us two and a half centuries ago. We just released the follow-up to that book, “Essential American Wisdom: Observations On A Troubled Republic, Vol. I” in which we offered a collection of essays to wrap some modern context around the mess the Biden Administration has made of America since ascending to the throne of tyrannical rule.
Now that the 2022 midterm elections have taken place, although the count is not yet complete on several races, it is clear that there has been a mostly peaceful coup in this country but one vastly different in nature and construct than we could ever have imagined over the course of having written these two books across a span of nearly three years. And I say as much because, unlike the efforts of the various protest generations to overthrow America’s governing systems, the Biden Administration has effectively overthrown the American people, who our Founding Fathers charged with the responsibility to stand up and sustain the governing bodies this Administration has now weaponized and turned against us.
By definition, a coup is meant to suggest a seizure of power from a government, but in the case of the 2022 midterms, the coup is, in fact, a seizure of power from the people that empowered this government at its inception. And, if I’m being honest, when I say the Biden Administration, I’m talking about the whole of the current governing systems, which includes both pieces of the legislative branch, colluding amongst and between each other to separate the American people from the power bestowed upon them by the Constitution and Bill of Rights. And while it is tempting to move forward with thousands of words to support my claim, I will, instead, offer a couple of categories for readers to investigate further of their own accord; the power of politicians to manipulate the national conversation through mainstream and social media as well as corporate influence, the capacity of elected officials to influence election results, and the aggressive pursuit to fracture American society and culture and drive wedges of division between individual members of it. For extra credit, you can poke around the interwebs and inquire about the rate of personal wealth growth as a function of terms served in public office. Just sayin’.
I created a quote many years ago that has been my motto ever since; “no one takes anything from you that you haven’t let them keep.” I think it’s important to put this stake in the ground to set the tone for my observation that, despite the civil War our elected officials instigated in this country, the sanctity of our fraying national conviction that our rights come from God, not government, and that America works because we have unalienable rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, has only been infringed because we have allowed it to be. But this is only true because we have allowed it to be and have yet to take back what has been taken from us.
We closed the first book with a chapter titled “Curing The Cancer Of Ignorance.” A little over six thousand words in length, we made (one last time) the point that the erosion of American principles and ideals began 60 years ago and has been allowed to continue, more or less unrestrained, in large part because too few of us put up the necessary effort to prevent it from happening. The very same thing can be said about the 2022 midterm elections, and it is not intended to offend but to educate; those that would see America burned to the ground, presuming a new and better one can be built from its ashes, are ignorant of the facts of not only America and its history but also of the larger history of humankind. And, despite the reaction to the midterm election results, the longevity of the American Nation will be realized not on one or two, or three election cycles but rather a new, superior long game to the one than has been played for the last 60 years must be initiated for the next 60 years, armed with an understanding that it will take just as long to clean up the mess we have made as it took to make it in the first place.
Claiming a status no greater than writer and citizen journalist, I offer a summation of the starting point from which the new long game might begin to take shape:
Governors: 27 R, 23 D. House: (not final) 219 R, 216 D. Senate: (not final) 49 R, 51 D.
Crime thru the roof, an economy in the toilet, communities in tatters & a govt. with no sense of itself or the suffering of its people. Is this really the best we can do? Well, of course, it’s not, but to fix a problem, you must first understand its scope and nature. And while many might disagree with me, I’m a lifelong believer in the notion that all politics is local, and because I have watched – over the last 50 years- the extent to which the executive and legislative branches have been corrupted and corrupted themselves, it is my contention did a new Revolution is not only necessary but has already begun in many states around the country. Not a revolution with guns and bombs, of course, but an uprising against the tyrannical rule of the federal political class and one that can only be waged (and ultimately won) by the individual states of which the American Nation is comprised. If we are to take back what has been taken from us, it starts in town halls and school board meetings and engagement with elected officials. If we do this right, none of us will live long enough to see that we actually turn this country around and made it better than when we came into this life.
