Democracy in Name Only
The empire cannot be reformed or restored; but perhaps we can lay the foundation for a new civilization.
I’ve long had a reverence for the Constitution, I realize, less the actual document and more the idea of it. I have believed in democracy in much the same way, appreciating the ideal more than a serious critique of the practice. I have assumed the basic stance that democracy is the worst form of government except for all the others, without really questioning that.
I’ve come to question this more for two reasons: one, that the most vocal defenders of democracy in America are in many ways the least democratic, most authoritarian among us; two, because in my recent dive into “dissident right” thinking, I find very few advocates for democracy. Increasingly, I do not find anyone particularly reverent of democracy, left or right, no one vocally defending it who is not also advocating for anti-democratic/authoritarian practices. It feels an increasingly lonely place, defending open democracy, hardly anyone seemingly interested. Even among those normies with a kind of passive appreciation for the belief that we live in a democracy, few defend it in any coherent way.
While I have always been skeptical about government of any kind, being something of a philosophical anarch, I have still basically believed in American democracy. But lately, I have come to the conclusion that America has never been a democracy, and it is likely that democracy itself can be nothing but a fiction, something we believe because it is convenient, and because it absolves us from doing anything about political corruption.
I am sympathetic too, to the idea that America was not designed as a democracy, but a Republic. But then America has divided into parties from our earliest days, despite ambivalence-to-hostility toward the idea of factions, and Madison railing against parties in Federalist #10.
Complaints are every where heard from our most considerate and virtuous citizens, equally the friends of public and private faith, and of public and personal liberty; that our governments are too unstable; that the public good is disregarded in the conflicts of rival parties; and that measures are too often decided, not according to the rules of justice, and the rights of the minor party; but by the superior force of an interested and over-bearing majority.
Regardless, in the beginning, Federalists and Republicans, then National Republicans and Democratic-Republicans, then Whigs and Democrats, then finally Republicans and Democrats by the beginning of the Civil War until now. Now of course, what we have is a uniparty, which consistently votes in opposition to the interests of the citizenry. Something more like Kabuki, performance theater to inflame the passions while the country is looted by internationalists and domestic oligarchs. The real power in America is the unelected, entrenched, mostly anonymous deep state. Politicians are mostly fo’ sho’.
Public sentiment has no effect on government policy. The thing does what the thing wishes to do.
So the second most obvious reality of American politics is that power doesn’t care about public sentiment. You can oppose whatever you want, peasant, but don’t think that it means something. Institutions have no levers that people outside of the institutions can get their hands on.
This seems to be emerging, globally, as a universal experience, and (for example) no amount of Canadian despair manages to dislodge Justin Trudeau or his batshit ministers.
It is also probably true that the vast majority of Americans don’t really care whether America is a republic or democracy or plutocracy or a monarchy, as long as they feel free and are optimistic about the future. It was true also, in the founding, most Americans were indifferent to the separatist or loyalist cause, assuming it was no gain necessarily, trading one despot for many of them.
Few thinking people believe this “democracy” is reformable. The empire, GAE imperium, America the global hegemon, Globohomo increasingly goes about unclothed, an advanced state of decay, materially, psychically, spiritually, as evidenced by the 35trillion dollar debt exceeding GDP and expanding by 1trillion every hundred days, an oblivious, geriatric elite refusing to relinquish power, a military so complex it can’t function efficiently or effectively, an intelligence community gone demonic, 4.3 trillion spent on health care every year for a population that it is 60% chronically ill, public and higher education training ideological zealots not responsible citizens, inflation running officially around 5% but in reality 10+%.
These are just the symptoms. Kruptos in this piece lays out the mechanics why. This is an erudite and clear picture why reforming the system is not possible.
The only solution is parallel systems, so when the existing system and political parties collapse, which will also be the collapse of America as hegemon and very likely the dollar, there is an organized, nation-wide group capable of assuming power and something like continuity, order instead of chaos.
By now most of us are well aware of the scope of the problems we face. Our societies are controlled by a transnational class of managerial elites increasingly isolated from the people they rule, and from reality. These elites, and the many institutions they control, have been captured by a revolutionary ideology that seeks to remake the world, and everyone in it, from the top down.
The vast machinery of modern managerial technocracy has been turned against us, its bulging bureaucracies seeking to impose on us a totalizing project of internal colonization. Our systems of self-governance, the cultural fabric of our national ways of life, even our very human nature are being intentionally suppressed and replaced with the stifling conformity of a rigid system of ideological and technological control. All remaining semblances of democratic accountability are today being cast aside in favor of governance via mass manipulation and open coercion. Increasingly, any dissent is treated as a threat to the security of the state – and is punished as such.
We are dealing with a deep state technocracy, internationalist cabal, that is well aware of the mechanics of civilization decline and collapse Kruptos discusses in his piece, which is practicing democide as policy, in cahoots with the Health Care cartel, to apparently get ahead of the curve. Covid was merely a test run. More like that is coming, likely to be even more disrupting because those who perpetrated the Covid con paid no consequence. As Mattias Desmet recently pointed out, the same people who called you a gramma killer because you were skeptical about the jabs and covid policy generally, are uber-enthusiastic about the health care savings that is assisted suicide and “mysteriously persistent” elevated excess death rates. Liberal democracy has turned parasitic, pathological, deadly to the citizenry.
N.S. Lyons:
What is to be done? Let me propose that today’s conservatives have failed in large part because, in addition to a simple lack of backbone, they have completely forgotten the basic foundations of building real political power. Before I return to that point, however, let me first outline four key attributes that I think any real right-wing strategy would need to possess in order to actually be successful today.
Such a strategy would first of all have to be anti-fragile. That means it would have to be difficult to disrupt and suppress, no matter how much its enemies tried. In fact, ideally it should even gain strength from persecution, rather than lose it. In short, it must be very hard to kill.
It must be scalable. By this I mean that it must be flexible enough to meet a wide range of possible challenges and scenarios – from draconian repression, to acute instability, to sweeping electoral victory – without the core thrust of its strategy ever needing to change.
It must be self-legitimizing. Rather than its legitimacy hinging on promises, such as on the outcomes of an election or specific legislation, it should generate loyalty and popular legitimacy from the core nature of its very existence and everyday function.
Most importantly, it must be self-reinforcing. That means its every action builds the capacity for further action on a greater scale; every exercise of power generates additional power; every success makes further successes more likely, until the accumulated facts on the ground make victory seem inevitable…
I was in a bar recently, talking with a young veteran. He is bored with life in America, he misses combat. I asked him what he thought about a “local warrior corp?” His eyes lit up. We talked at length about men coming together to train, to learn skills. Civil war is inevitable, he said. But we would train not to start it, I replied, only to be prepared for what ever happens. He agreed. I did not talk so much about volunteering, political organizing, all that NS Lyons is describing in his piece (this warrior is a fellow musician and I expect to see a lot more of him.)
It is clear, young men hungry for something to do that has purpose and is meaningful are legion. Otherwise many of them are merely lost, doing harm to themselves mostly, but also to others and not really participating in civil society, merely helping to drag it down. That is in many ways by design, it serves the enemies of freedom and America.
If there is such a thing as democracy it is people talking, arguing about things that matter for the preservation of freedom.
That said, the Magna Carta, Common Law, the Bill of Rights and the Constitution: I know of no more clear explication of our rights, anywhere in the world. Acting like we can abandon that, that is the stuff of leftist ideologues who want to make the world in their own toxic, debased image. No society in the history of the world emerged out of a vacuum. Every new culture takes what is useful from the old and remakes it.
There is so much good work to be done. Perhaps to build a new civilization all our own, here in America.
"If there is such a thing as democracy it is people talking, arguing about things that matter for the preservation of freedom."
I think that people to indeed talk about things that matter, but the vast majority are stuck in a series of false dichotomies that keep them swirling in comfortable cul-de-sacs. People no longer know how to be uncomfortable, to face uncertainty, to do something they have not done. That's why they shun conversations about parallel communities/societies: They have come to rely so heavily on Daddy Government and Mommy Medicine.
I was going to say that these people will become serious liabilities if SHTF, but the truth is, they have already hampered true Freedom with their fear-based compliance. "Covid" was the psychopathic tyrants' recent trial balloon, of course, and most of humanity fell into lockstep not only with the fake "mandates" but with the ridiculous principles underpinning the entire scam.
We're on our own to create mini-tribes of local, like-minded folks who will work together to build communities based on our Creator-given Rights.
A difficult - but necessary - subject. Fits your Substack name - BOT4OJ.
I appreciate this because I am aware of the republic and democracy being MIA. Maybe this came to be because most people just go about their life without deliberately acting to participate in their governance. Generations of people letting democracy and the republic slide, to the point where it is barely visible in the rear view mirror. Will anyone act now?