Looking Ahead

     As we enter the second Trump Administration, it’s vital to keep certain fundamental truths in mind at all times. Today’s piece, therefore, will be a reflection upon those truths. I believe they’ll shape the political battles of the next four years… and that those battles will be characterized by a no-prisoners, no-mercy attitude among the allegiants of the Left.

1. The Nature of Government.

     Government is an association of men who do violence to the rest of us. – Leo Tolstoy

     The method of the State, regardless of who is at the helm, is force: violence, coercion, and intimidation. The privilege of using force and getting away with it is the State’s defining characteristic.

     The many perfidies of the Bidenites, now blessedly expelled from the corridors of power, were made possible by their command of federal force. That force, whether instantiated in troops or prosecutors and courts, was used to benefit some and to violate others. Oftentimes the benefits were made possible by the violations.

2. The Nature Of Politics.

     There are no morals in politics; there is only expedience. – Vladimir Ilyich Ulyanov, a.k.a. Nikolai Lenin

     The above is the faith of the Left. It has never been otherwise. What they seek, they pursue without scruple, for there is no room in power politics for qualms of conscience. It’s not a game; a game has rules that all must agree to respect.

     The Left’s ultimate aim is unchallenged and absolute power. Nothing else matters even a little. What its regimes have done in their times of dominance is exactly and only what they have set out to do, regardless of the consequences.

3. Political Combat Will Not Cease.

     Under certain conditions, men respond as powerfully to fiction as they do to realities, and in many cases, they help to create the very fiction to which they respond. – Walter Lippmann

     They to whom power is the be-all and end-all do not accept defeat. They don’t say to themselves, “Well, it’s their time now. Ours will come again.” They retreat, review and revise their tactics, and ready new strokes for the weapons they still wield. In our time, the Left’s most reliable weapon, which has proved exceedingly difficult to wrest from their hands, is the coordinated lie promulgated through the major media.

     Left-aligned media voices have initiated a campaign of defamation: first, against President Trump’s inaugural speech; second, against his key issues and proposed actions; third, against his character and his record as president. While the president knows what he wants to achieve, a large fraction of the general public can be deceived about those goals. The media’s coordinated efforts to defame him are aimed toward that end. They will not cease. Indeed, one of the Left’s chief objectives is to segue from that campaign to the promotion of its own program of social fascism and whatever standard-bearers they can find to champion it.

     By comparison to its propaganda efforts, the Left’s attempts to obstruct the Trump / MAGA agenda by legislative maneuvers and Deep State mulishness are trivial, obstacles the second Trump Administration will easily overcome.

4. And Therefore…?

     The curmudgeon greets the day by wondering “What fresh hell is this?” The curmudgeon greets a stranger by wondering: “What are you trying to sell me?” The curmudgeon greets an exciting new idea by thinking of all the disastrous ways in which it will go wrong. And, given a bit of time, the curmudgeon more often than not turns out to have been right. — Sam Leith

     Even the surliest curmudgeon would prefer to remain hopeful. Take it from a Best of Breed winner. But experience is an unsparing teacher – and above all, what she teaches is that the paths to progress and wisdom are few, steep, and strewn with jagged stones, while the paths to degradation and defeat are many, smooth, and inviting.

     If you’ve managed to internalize the vital, fundamental observations above, the lesson to be drawn is already resounding in your brain:

     All deserved jubilation to the side, the Right must not declare victory and retire from the field.

5. Immediate Implications.

     We have learned by observation that the Left’s current strategic orientation is toward coalitions of the disaffected. Its masters seek out groups of such persons and imply (they seldom promise specifically and unambiguously) that when the Left returns to power, those groups will “get their due.” Upon assembling a sufficient number of such groups, they reach for the levers of power.

     This is a canny strategy, for it flows from our first fundamental observation: the use of government force, regardless of the intentions of the wielders, will inevitably harm some persons. Thus, even an America-centric agenda such as Trump’s, which is sincerely aimed at raising the fortunes of the whole nation, will result in some persons losing something they value. It doesn’t matter if “what they value” was originally conveyed to them by government force against others. Indeed, persons who lose benefits afforded them by prior regimes tend to be bitterer than those whose losses are merely the contortions of Fortune herself.

     Therefore we may reliably expect Leftist maneuvers to assemble those aggrieved by the Trump / MAGA agenda into a fresh coalition with which to press for a return to power. Watch in particular for the coalescence of fired and furloughed Deep State workers into political action groups. Watch also for the media to press and amplify their claims. As has been said more than once, the disadvantaged and disgruntled get more column-inches during Republican administrations than during Democrat ones.

6. From A Greater Height.

     The greatest needs of any force in the field are information and options. In the past, conservatives and libertarians have not put sufficient effort into studying the strategies and tactics of their opponents. In particular, we have overemphasized argument, as if what matters politically is being correct about the causes of things liked and disliked. To be as kind as possible, that is the fruit of a benevolence toward the Left that’s politically crippling to the Right.

     The late William F. Buckley was famous, and widely admired, for inviting political opponents to debate him and other conservative luminaries in open fora. But as attractive as that openness is, it embeds a supposition that has hobbled the Right for more than a century: i.e., that Left and Right are equally benevolent and therefore seek the same ends. That is a self-defeating premise. The Left has exploited it since its emergence.

     The maxims of Saul Alinsky make capital of our naivety. Note these in particular:

     RULE 4: “Make the enemy live up to its own book of rules.” If the rule is that every letter gets a reply, send 30,000 letters. You can kill them with this because no one can possibly obey all of their own rules. (This is a serious rule. The besieged entity’s very credibility and reputation is at stake, because if activists catch it lying or not living up to its commitments, they can continue to chip away at the damage.)

     RULE 12: Pick the target, freeze it, personalize it, and polarize it.” Cut off the support network and isolate the target from sympathy. Go after people and not institutions; people hurt faster than institutions. (This is cruel but very effective. Direct, personalized criticism and ridicule works.)

     He who assumes that his blood enemy is “a good person at heart,” that “he wants the same things we do,” is completely helpless before such tactics.

7. In Conclusion.

     If the Left will continue fighting, if its aim is power above all else and woe betide those who oppose it, and if it therefore dismisses all “rules of the contest” ab initio, the Right must remain flexed for combat at all times:

1. We must discard with prejudice the premise that Left and Right seek the same things for America and Americans.
2. We must put real effort into studying the Left’s strategies and tactics, for over the century past they have defeated us more often than the reverse.
3. We must build a political intelligence network whose emphasis will not be on argumentation, but on learning what our adversaries have in mind and what moves they plan.
4. We must conform our political efforts to what our intelligence network discovers.

     And with that, I yield the floor to my Gentle Readers.