That’s the question on millions of Americans’ minds after the utter, protracted betrayal of Republican officials – federal and state – to represent the preferences of the voters that elected them. Their most recent defection is on the subject of greatest importance to social stability: the right to keep and bear arms. Fourteen GOP Senators, all but one of them from a “deep red” state, have supported the recent “gun control” bill. That’s more than enough to force it through Congress to Biden’s desk.

     The voters who seated them are appalled. They’ve watched the defection of the “party of the Constitution / party of limited government” to the dark side in real time. They’ve carpeted their floors with scalp flakes from all the head-scratching. They’ve pondered whether they can trust the evidence of their senses and the verdicts of their reasoning. But the facts are as they are.

     I wrote on this subject quite recently:

     No period of Republican federal dominance has done anything of consequence to reverse the trend of government expansion. Washington’s destruction of our rights, our economy, and our sovereignty has been relentless.

     In truth, it’s worse. As Tucker Carlson said just last night, the GOP has acted to support the fatuous, wholly destructive Biden agenda virtually from the day the Vegetable-in-Chief was inaugurated:

     Indeed, by collaborating with the forces striving to suppress investigation into the nationwide vote fraud in November 2020, they’ve sided with the Democrats, including the most vicious of them, from the morning after that fateful election.

     But what’s this? Another “Vote Republican!” pitch? Is anyone else asking “Why should we bother?”

     If we confine our thinking to what we can do via the ballot box, we have foredoomed ourselves.

     Some commentators have theorized that the GOP’s defections from our interests are part of its overall electoral strategy. They argue that the more of the Biden agenda passes, the better it will be for Republican electoral prospects in November this year and November 2024. Viewed thus, Republicans’ tacit and not-so-tacit compliance with the Usurper Regime is actually a stroke for achieving such Republican dominance in Washington that nothing will be able to impede a conservative revival. The consequence, they claim, will be a true and massive course correction that will revitalize the Constitution and the rights it guarantees.

     But one does not advance by retreating. The notion that the GOP’s defections are setting up the Democrats for an electoral haymaker is absurd. The individuals involved in these betrayals are inherently more concerned with their own electoral fortunes than with those of their party. (Remember how few of them have ever held a non-government job.) What are they counting on to keep them in office?

     The answer to that question is the “two-party system” itself. Establishmentarians maintain rigid control of the state and local party chapters. They wield sufficient power to prevent the rise of genuinely conservative, Constitution-faithful individuals. Such persons only break through the Establishment’s barriers under the most unusual circumstances. So incumbents who have the support of the party bosses are protected from upstarts who will challenge their fidelity to the positions they claim to espouse. And of course, to vote for a candidate who wears neither the (D) nor the (R) is to “waste your vote.”

     The loss of voters’ trust in “their” representatives and the electoral system generally is nearly total and appears irreversible. Yet as long as all alternatives are foreclosed, current conditions will continue.

     What alternatives remain?

     The one with the widest approbation is “Irish democracy:” the disaffiliation and de facto secession of individuals from the political system. The Irish are well known for this, as are the Italians. “Pass whatever laws you like, gentlemen. If we choose to ignore them, what are you going to do about it?” And there was a time when Americans could have implemented that alternative with good confidence that it would be effective. However, today matters are not so favorable. Too many of us are too dependent on the system’s employment or largesse. Too many are in thrall to a corporation that actively supports the system, such that their livelihoods inherently feed the beast. And too many are too frightened by the possible consequences of defying the Omnipotent State.

     Could the remainder do anything effective? Unclear. What is clear is that should such a movement arise, the Establishment would be swift to act against it – probably in the “IRS style” of offering rewards to those willing to betray their neighbors, friends, and acquaintances for a cash reward. In our “post-moral,” “post-ethical,” “post-Christian” era, what degree of fidelity to friendship and community could we reasonably expect?

     The alternative of armed revolution seems unlikely. We have degenerated too far, and the State has risen too high and become too rapacious. Were such a revolution to begin, the death toll would dwarf any war in the history of Mankind. Nor would what follows necessarily be better than today.

     That’s all I have the stomach for at the moment. Any thoughts, Gentle Readers?

     “If you continue to do what you’ve always done, you’ll continue to get what you’ve always gotten.” – Michael Emerling

     Jack Kerwick asks us, directly and plainly. Here’s the Sunday Punch:

     How exactly is voting Republican a matter of “fighting the Left,” or “fighting for the heart and soul of America?” Notice that GOP politicians and conservative media personalities are always glaringly vague on this point. They just treat as axiomatic that a vote for a Republican is a vote to retard the advances of the Left. In point of fact, however, we know nothing could be further from reality.

     Even now, with a red tsunami forecasted for November, not a single Republican or Big Conservative media scribbler or talking head is so much as hinting at what Republicans plan on doing when they regain Congress (let alone how they plan on doing it). Nor are they saying what they surely will say if and when this forecast comes to fruition, that while they have the Congress locked up, they don’t yet have the presidency, so it’s unrealistic for their constituents to expect for them to do all that much (I’m not prophetic, it’s just that I’m old enough to have seen this movie on more than one occasion).

     Many Americans have asked themselves the questions Kerwick asks in his angry, cynical column. There are no satisfactory answers — answers, that is, that would satisfy us. There are answers, however.

     “Vote Republican!” “Why?” “Because…well…because we want our turn! We want the committee chairmanships! We want the cocktail parties! We want to be the featured guests on the talking-heads shows! We want to be first in line at the Big Taxpayer-Catered Buffet once again!”

     No period of Republican federal dominance has done anything of consequence to reverse the trend of government expansion. Washington’s destruction of our rights, our economy, and our sovereignty has been relentless. Donald Trump tried his best, knowing that as an “outsider” we expected him to do what the political Establishment would never entertain: reduce the size, expense, and arrogance of the Omnipotent State. Yet even he, with all his energy and resolve, was unable to make permanent any of his admittedly laudable goals. The executive orders he issued have all been reversed…and quite a number of Republican legislators are happy about it.

     Politicians are people who have made the pursuit of power their highest aim. They love power, even more than they love the perquisites that come with it. And regardless of the letter after their names, they will never, ever do anything to reduce the power of the Omnipotent State. They merely want their hands on its levers.

     Time was, there was a West Coast supermarket chain that emblazoned its bags with a heart-lifting bit of advice:

     The truth in those six words is self-evident. What, after all, have politicians been hectoring us about for decades now? Low voter turnout. What have all the “public-service pitches” been telling us: Feel the power, America! Get out there and vote! And what, exactly, does it all amount to, beyond their desire that we endorse their chosen enterprise through the ballot box?

     The immense balloting fraud of the 2020 elections may have been intended, at least as a minor consequence, to reinforce the notion that “we” support the system as it stands. After all, never have more votes been tallied in any American election. People wouldn’t vote in such numbers if they didn’t believe in the importance and trustworthiness of the electoral process, would they? Never mind that a lot of those ballots were cast by the unenfranchised, or by the dead, or by persons who voted many times, or were filled out by machines and trucked across the country to those states where they could swing the results.

     By the way: how many times have you heard some opinion-monger talk about “our two-party system?” Take careful note of each word. “Our?” Who do you mean by that? “Two-party?” How did it get to be only two – and who benefits most from the marginalization of “minor” parties? “System?” In what way is it a system? What mechanisms exist to keep it that way — and who benefits from its perpetuation?

     Do not look to government as a solution to the evils of government — and do not look to politicians to undo the evils created by politicians. They are of a single breed: one that should be exterminated to the last man, so that the rest of us can get on with the business of living freely and in peace.