Strongmen

 

May 1, 2019

 

We have seen populist strongmen win democratic elections before.  With disdain and from the comfort of our redoubt of freedom, prosperity, and order, we have witnessed it in other nations.   We have witnessed their nationalist attacks on civility, their singling out of minority groups for blame and resentments, their constant impugning of perceived enemies and the free press, their greed and corruption displayed openly and defiantly, producing little more than feckless protest.  We have watched them sneer while they peddle brazen, disprovable lies and dare defiance, their increasingly cultish followers convinced to cover their eyes and slavishly imagine a world only as their leader portrays it. 

We have seen all of these things before.

It has never ended well. 

It has never ended peacefully.

It has ended with destruction. 

It has ended with death, and with fleeing masses.

Eventually, these straw houses collapse under the weight of their own bloviating ineptitude, the increasingly intolerable daily struggles faced by their sycophantic followers, the erosion of real conditions on the ground that ultimately lead to collapse.  Puppet legislators and appointees, their hands in the pockets of both those who set them on this path and those who foolishly and naively elected them, know well that when the tables turn, and the house collapses, they will be buried with it – and thus they will do anything to forestall their ruin, and to avoid it.  It is why we are witnessing people say things we never believed we’d hear, repeating blatant lies, defending the indefensible.  These people know they are lying.  They know that we know they are lying.  But their fear of the strongman and his slavishly loyal followers perpetuates our national theatre of the absurd. 

All of this is happening today in the United States, God help us. 

In America we do not fear our presidents; yet now it seems we do.  This is the most deeply troubling and deeply un-American thing I have ever witnessed in our politics.  In a nation of laws, no man is to be feared, but we are apparently no longer a nation of laws.  The minority which has captured power, and is doing everything it can to avoid losing it, knows that if it does, its house will be in ruin.  And with it will fall storied careers and once sterling reputations, lost will be so many lofty places of privilege and power.  Perhaps, in some cases, even freedom.  And so they will do almost anything to forestall it. 

They will not be the first to fall.  It will be those in their charge.

First, you will lose your freedom.  It is unlikely you will even notice until it is too late.  Next, you will lose your prosperity.  This has been happening for years, but it has not yet become intolerable.  Finally, when it does, you will lose your stability and order.  Your institutions, and the reliable and predictable structure of your society, will begin to collapse.

It is dusk in America.  The dark of night is rapidly approaching.  Our nation of laws, our shining city on the hill, our place of hope and refuge for the oppressed, will soon be irretrievably lost, at least to us.  What will it take for our children to reclaim it?