A House Divided Cannot Stand

 

Our title must give thanks to President Abraham Lincoln who used it in his accepting speech upon receiving the Illinois Republican Party’s nomination as that state’s United States senator. His review was about the issue of slavery which was tearing the United States in half and eventually led to the Civil War. Things back then were likely worse than they are currently but also moved slower thus tempers and reactions were not immediate and thus did not have quite the additive nature of items today where a comment Tweeted in a reference can reach around the world and back within seconds and millions can be roused from dead asleep to enraged by their i-Phone tones that something is up and so should they be awake and as enraged about the latest scandalous event or phrase made in passing. The threat developing in the United States is just as serious today as things were in Lincoln’s day, and that is making a dangerous measure which some will claim is over the top and others will claim that we haven’t seen nothing yet and admonish that just wait until the truth hits and the reality becomes unstoppable. These are some of those we should fear no matter which side they appear to represent in this struggle. The divide in the United States which is breaking-up friendships, marriages, families and even business partners is not as much about the loss of Hillary Clinton to Donald Trump or the end of the Obama Presidency and his replacement with what many believe is a reprobate.

 

The root of the problem goes beyond the two parties or liberals and conservatives and is really being driven by a group which remains unseen who wish to change the governance of the United States. These forces do not believe the people are wise or intelligent enough nor do they possess the understanding and deep thought necessary to rule themselves. These people are not newcomers to this thought but go back deeply into history. This was the argument made by the Kings and Emperors who along with the rest of the elite as Barons, Earls and the rest of the aristocracy made for their rightful place ruling over the serfs in their charge. They claimed that the serfs would starve and die without their administering and knowledge of things greater than they could understand and the protection they provided from those outside forces which would take everything if the serfs were not protected by their betters (view Monty Python spoof of monarchy in below video). These archetypical elitists continue to this day with some actually tracing their family trees back to those very leaders from before the democratic revolutions progressed across Europe coming to a head during and immediately after World War I, the last destructive war caused by the monarchies and their interwoven treaties and intricacies. The next phase of rule of the masses by their betters followed in two opposing political theories, Communism and Fascism. Fascism fell out of favor due to World War II which resulted in two opposing themes taking hold in the more developed world, this time Communism and the varying forms of Democratic rule from Republic to Parliamentary systems. Communism was the preservation of the theory that the people required a class of elites to lead them while the Democracies where trust was placed in the common man to be capable of collectively proving to be smarter than those perceived elites. William F. Buckley, Jr. gave this idea a solid understanding and easy to understand example when he stated, “I’d rather entrust the government of the United States to the first 400 people listed in the Boston telephone directory than to the faculty of Harvard University.” Me, I would rather be ruled by a random choosing of one-hundred midlands farmers than the United States Senate. If others have said this before, then I thank them for implanting the thought in my head, if not, may I please claim this one?

 

 

Today there are groups of elites who believe they should be granted the right to rule over the people because the people are too easily mislead and choose the wrong people to lead them and thus cannot be trusted to choose their own leaders. Some of these people are behind some of the unrest fomenting in the United States over the election of Donald Trump as President. An interesting aside could be taken that this election was exactly the above as Trump was elected by those hundred farmers over the choice of the urban elites. The reality today is there are groups of elitists who really do believe they should hold all the power simply because the people know not what they do. They are the leaders in the centrality of a number of movements, professions and former aristocracy. Examples which are immediately obvious include the mainstream media, the ecology elites, political elites, the extremely wealthy, academia, the political class and the leaders of industry among others. This struggle is being played out right now in the United States. What is truly sad is some are following the elitists for all the wrong reasons and because they are unaware of the reality driving much of the debate. The one thing the elitists have learned in their past centuries of attempting to regain their treasured positions of complete control is that the people must be tricked and fooled into bringing these elitists back into power, a reality which will lead to a loss of freedoms and liberties which will no longer be retrievable for generations afterward. The problem is that the elitists have a strong argument this time simply because their opposing side is represented by a questionable and untested leader who has a list of flaws in his past and personal traits which make picking him apart excessively easy. The side of leadership by the common man is represented by President Trump, whose every misstep, and let us admit there have been a plethora, while the elitist side is an unknown onto what each person can write their own desires, be they a return to President Obama, the election of President Hillary Clinton or something entirely different, thus one is easily faulted while the other can be portrayed as perfection. Unamazingly, this is exactly the way everything is unfolding, President Trump is being faulted for every shortcoming while the opposite side can claim their people would have performed perfectly. What is never depicted is whether their people means Hillary Clinton’s administration, the former administration of President Obama or some mythical administration of some thus far unforeseen President who was the ideal amalgam of former and potential Presidents from all of history and potential future Presidents.

 

Much of this battle is taking place on the many social networks from Twitter to Facebook to numerous chatrooms and discussion forums. The rancor is unprecedented, but then attempted revolutions often start with increased rancor and an escape from the normal channels of mediation which allow for differences of opinions in a normal and, for lack of a better term, congenial manner. There is another difference which signals troubles ahead. The rancor in a normal transition of power usually begins at an elevated level and steadily tones down until it become almost silent but this time the decline appears to not have taken a normal decline in intensity and instead has appeared to be refreshed whenever the slightest lull even shows the slightest inclination to start. This could be due to some having serious problems accepting the results of the election and they appear simply unable to allow their anger to dissipate as is the usual nature after losing an election. But there is a more sinister and troubling possibility which should scare every individual no matter which side they find themselves. The more troubling reason would be that there are those whose desire and are leading the charge towards a critical point where they plan to lead a revolution, a coup, and take charge of the controls of power and install themselves as the new leadership, unelected and soon to install their permanency through strict control and enforcement of their policies, and by that, their rule. Rousing the public in what can only be termed a holy anger, leading a rising struggle replete with violent demonstrations leading to rioting throughout the major metropolises, this followed by citizens demand for order, and then taking temporary power to restore the order demanded and then simply never relenting that power has been the exact means of destroying democracies and replacing them with some form of absolute rule, be them autocracies, theocracies, oligarchies, aristocracies or any other “crazies”, as we prefer to label them. There are reasons that France is in its Fifth Republic, or is it Sixth, no Fifth but soon it just might be the Sixth Republic which very well could be a theocracy or some other form of the “crazies.”

 

The main thing is that we have witnessed is an unrivaled level of distressed anger in the just over two-hundred days since the election and barely passed the one-hundred-thirtieth day of the Trump administration. The main message behind much of the angst has been that only the selected few with the right political and social orientation should be permitted to lead the United States. These people are also only to be found on the coasts and the largest of metropolises and who have the correct education and breeding to be true and reputable leadership. Many of the people making all the noise and, in some cases, demonstrations and rioting are completely unaware that their movement, “The Revolution” crusade, is being orchestrated by people from behind the scenes and who are not ever to be found on the frontlines in the streets being arrested and in time facing water cannons and other nonfatal means of dispersion and suppression being used. What they are completely unaware of, and are blinded from seeing, is that these very behind the scenes instigators will some day, should their plans lead to the coup they hope to realize come to fruition, they will use far more lethal means including military weaponry slaughtering the rioters and demonstrators in the streets while subjugating the rest of the population as they install their form of “crazies” on the United States. History has shown this methodical series of manipulating events to start a revolution and take control of all forms of political, societal, police, military and productive power establishing absolute rule. The picture is familiar to those who have studied history, which in the United States means those above fifty-five years of age, or otherwise known as back in the day when most of the public school system still taught world history, civics, and especially American history.

 

Images from American History

 

Perhaps this plan has been in the incubator for almost a half-century and explains why those graduating after approximately 1980 were never taught civics or any form of history as required for graduation and merely as electives, and sold as very difficult electives which could more easily be earned with basket weaving or any of the newest soft-sciences including many of the specialized fields or disciplines such as psychology, sociology, anthropology, or political science, that interpret human behavior, institutions, society often where all opinions and interpretations are acceptable with the grades given depend on accepting preconceived dogma regurgitating exact phrases without any requirement for understanding or logical arguments. This has allowed for many amongst the youth and young adults to be led without their having any references by which to judge that which they are being fed to instigate their actions including demonstrating and rioting. They are unaware that their continued agitation could simply be agitprop leading them to be used for the gain if unseen manipulators whose real plans do not include their continued good health. In many ways, the scene is worrying and can only elicit mourning over the potential for an end which leads to a frightening end. As we have stated, this scenario has happened before, and if not taken seriously, will result in darkness beyond anything seen previously in history. Many studiers of world history have predicted that if, or when, the United States democratic republic is brought down and replaced with some autocratic or other of the numerous “crazies,” it will become the greatest tyranny of evil and may bring on the end of history as we know it.

 

Normalcy as we have known it since the end of World War II and the end of the Soviet Union with a massive decrease in the horrific costs of war, is only because a nuclear conflict made war almost unthinkable leading to proxy wars where main powers took sides in lesser conflicts. The major wars have shown ever-growing casualty figures with a drastic decline since the end of World War II and the onset of the Nuclear Age. Major wars between the greater powers of each age have extracted the greatest number of fatalities and total casualties but this number has approached zero since the onset of the Nuclear Age (see graph below). This is a slightly misleading graph, as there have been proxy wars, but this shows direct conflicts which became improbable due to the risk of escalation to a nuclear war which would completely ravage all warring nations. This leads to asking a disturbing question, what happens when those wielding nuclear weaponry are not aware or take no heed to the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki and have no reason to fear a nuclear exchange either between one another or with one of the established major nuclear powers? What will be the result to the world when, not if, some neo-nuclear power decides that they not only can survive a nuclear exchange, but welcome the opportunity for a nuclear exchange, as martyrdom is preferable to life where they are not the supreme power and authority over the world? What does the world look like once one of the neo-nuclear powers attains sufficient nuclear weapons to reduce all of their perceived enemies to nuclear rubble? This would mean they have made sufficient first generation nuclear weapons with a low yield but emit an unimaginable EMP pulse reducing an entire continent’s electrical grid to ashes and destroys nearly all electronic devices, even many not even powered, and still retain sufficient advanced thermos-nuclear warheads to reduce every major nuclear power as well as all perceived enemies main cities to nuclear rubble, then what? How will the world move further into any form of future as long as such threats exist? The answers to all these questions are unsettling and may depend on a functioning United States behind which the world can find to rally and defeat any such threat before it completely actualizes one of the above scenarios.

 

 

The world has a wondrous future providing our societies can remain intact and free, or at least moving towards a world where liberty and freedom are the norm. This will require one simple realization, education of all the people making sure everybody is literate and capable of understanding the most basic means for survival in a technical world which is rapidly approaching. We can start with one real and exciting challenge by reaching at the very least fifty percent literacy rate in Egypt. With its current democratic governance, which is protected by the military, a system not too dissimilar to what Ataturk set up in Turkey and worked well until recently when President Erdoğan took control, should President Sisi step from power, as he is currently a populist president, or is defeated in an election, and there is a president of Egypt who is not from the military but whose rule is still protected by the military, then Egypt would be the perfect test case. The one exception would be any Muslim Brotherhood candidate, or other terror representative such as Islamic State, are prevented from becoming a candidate for president. This makes Egypt an exceptional nation for installing such a remedy to their current high rate of illiteracy. Then Egypt could be used as a kind of laboratory where increased literacy and improved education of a population and the ensuing results can be used to determine the levels required for true and ultimate change from a third world to a first world nation and all that should ensue. Then other nations can be enticed to follow the Egypt example of improving their populations through education which enables them to become engaged in more productive and technical employment raising the population’s quality of life and their standard of living. The third world requires proper education to levels sufficient such that they attain near 100% literacy along with basic abilities in simple mathematics and understanding of basics such that their employment opportunities are enhanced. Achieving such an outcome will, unfortunately, be excessively difficult, as many of the non-free nations will refuse to permit their populations to be so educated as an educated populace would make their dictatorial rule more difficult. This is why freedom and liberty are so vital for the future of our planet. This is why any challenge to the Constitutional rule of law in the United States, no matter from which side of the political divide it arises, is a threat to the health of the entire world as currently there is no free nations ruled by law rather than men to replace the United States. Is the United States Constitution perfect; no, but it is the best system yet devised allowing the rule by the governed and until something better comes along, it will suffice. That is why the constitution is more important and demands preservation no matter who sits in the White House, and that is an important piece which must be understood by all sides.

 

Beyond the Cusp