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Notes -
A new post then. Below @samiam linked to a National Review piece that mocks a recent article in The Atlantic titled "Left-Wing Terrorism Is on the Rise".
The Atlantic is a center-left institution of American journalism. The not-magazine is capable of pushing certain signals over the hill into respectability status. This signal: it's okay to acknowledge left-wing violence as a problem, because we can remind ourselves the right's stochastic terror was successfully defeated, but not forgotten. How significant is it that a couple CSIS think tank goons can send this signal, and how much impact can they have?
In the previous paragraphs the authors set-up their prescription of "programs and expertise" only this time aimed leftward. They justify this by granting the Biden admin (and probably themselves) credit for throwing the book at Oath Keepers and Proud Boys following their January 6th doings. If memory serves the Proud Boys were a group of capital P-atriots who showed up to protests, dared their opposites to do the same, then engaged in fistfights. This is political violence and its escalation can be a concern, but it's not the same risk as a growing number of political assassinations. Assassinations seemingly perpetrated by culture warriors first, not ideologues.
The programs and expertise of think tank goons are unlikely to bring about an effective reversal in cultural trends. Disaffected radicals aren't in the habit of being persuaded by them. I offer two actionable alternatives:
Idea #1: Indoctrination works. Reinvigorate civic indoctrination in schools. Sell this one as renewed civic literacy and try not to pollute it too badly with culture war. Federally fund it as an opt-in for states to participate.
I suspect we do a piss poor job of teaching civics, politics, or anything in the shape of political philosophy in K-12. We do a poor enough job educating kids on subjects we care enough about to measure. We do not even attempt to teach kids to think about social fabric. Instead, we water it down to be meaningless or replace it with with diversity-isms and sin. Then we are surprised the kids go on to be demoralized by short-form videos which they accept as valid belief generators.
Idea #2: Semi-mandatory service. Want Pell grants or Medicare? Better sign up, 18 year old you. You can join the military, or you can go to a national forest to survey land for a year. Compulsory-but-not-compulsory service might sound like state violence to some, and fascism to others, but maybe we can find a few programs in addition to the military that a supermajority could support staffing with conscripted teens.
If the alternative of New Deal conscripts is instead waiting to figure out how to best Balkanize I say we give it a go. What might be other ideas for actionable things to combat the misery and cultural malaise?
The US was founded by people who used violence against the government and made it a constitutional right to bear arms. If you had asked the founding fathers about the NSA, the crazy levels of nepotism and corruption and how self-centred the American elite is, they wouldn't have called shooting them terrorism. What level of incompetence and acting like the elite in Versailles is required for the constitutional right to fight back to take effect?
Here is the thing. The US is still, for all its flaws, democratic.
When people got fed up with the DC elites, they voted in Trump, who at least set a new baseline for corruption and nepotism.
If you have a good majority (say 60%) of the citizens behind you, then you do not need to shoot at the feds, you can simply elect one of your own as the next president.
If you do not have such a majority, then using violence to enforce your norms seems bad. I will give you a pass if your group is oppressed to the level of the Jews under the Nazis, but whatever the rules about trans people in gendered bathrooms your society has are, they are insufficient reason to start planting bombs.
If I endorsed a "constitutional right to fight back" for minority positions, then I would have to endorse proponents of mutually exclusive policy proposals to use violence to settle their difference, because saying that violence is only justified whenever I personally think that the advocated policy would be a good idea does not universalize.
Violence sucks very hard. It does not show who is right, only who is left. It can paralyze societies, and is a habit which is very hard to kick even after your side has won. The French and Russian revolution are both cautionary tales here. A democratic process, even as flawed as the US one (FPTP, EC, gerrymandering and so on) is much preferable to bombs and rifles.
Except I'd argue that the past decade and change serve to illustrate why that doesn't work, because the president isn't actually in charge of the Executive any more (see basically everything MacIntyre talks about here, or this from Jim). FBI JTTF goes after the "domestic terrorists" it wants to, not the ones the President directs them at — as we saw when Bush the younger tried to redirect them from chasing specters of the Klan to Muslim jihadis.
Our democracy is a sham. It's as fake as pro wrestling.
Funny, from where I stand, Trump is actually getting the executive to accomplish his goals. The national guard did occupy the cities he ordered occupied, and his ICE is busy deporting foreigners, just as his constituents wanted. His military is very willing to bomb Iran on his orders or blow up suspected drug smuggling ships.
Any bureaucracy created by a presidential edict can be destroyed by another. Any created by an act of congress can likewise be destroyed through an act of congress. Last time I checked, MAGA controlled both chambers of congress. He also has a supreme court which decided that he gets away with anything. If congress wanted to pass an act tomorrow which said that the EPA was shut down, all their guidelines void and all their employees fired, they could do that.
I mean, Trump is probably hampered by his lack of qualified personnel, with RFK just being an especially shocking case. But that is a skill issue.
I am not saying that the game is not rigged on some level. Most congress critter are likely beholden to some rich donors, and constrained with regard to what they can vote for without pissing them off. Likewise, the two-party system and party control over who gets the nomination make it hard for outsiders to win. And vast parts of the media landscape are in the hands of a few very rich people who use it to push views which are in their interests.
But the game is always going to be a bit rigged in favor of the status quo. This is why I said you might need 60% instead of merely 51%. Also, to the degree that liberal deep-state DC elites are a thing, they certainly did not prevent Trump getting elected, twice. And the media landscape is actually a lot more diverse than it ever was before the internet.
This is certainly a minority view. Now, you can of course claim that most people have been brainwashed, and if they saw reality as clearly as you do they would support the destruction of the system. In some countries, e.g. Russia, I think you would be right. But US citizens have all sorts of news sources at their fingertip, if they listen to ${EVIL_PROPAGANDA_MEDIUM}, that is by choice and not by coercion.
RFK specifically is in his job as coalition politics, rather than because Trump can't find anyone else.
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Note that most of your comments on Trump actually getting the executive branch to do what he wants are part of the Trump 2 administration, not Trump 1 when overt and covert acts of deviance were regularly reported. Trump 2, in turn, has been an administration with exceptional deliberate pre-planning on how to try and make politically unpopular changes over the objection / resistance over the minority party, particularly with the atypical advantage of a governing trifecta, and has been accompanied by explicit denunciations for Trump installing loyalists and opposing 'independent' agencies.
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