To make next July 4 a true Independence Day - How About a Little Paine? Thomas Paine.

==  Americans hate history ==

Half of us are too future-obsessed to care much about dusty past dates and dustier past 'heroes.' The other half wrap themselves in nostalgic just-so stories, in order to justify their present-day obsessions. That divide crosses party lines, though more one or the other. But that's not the point, which is that...

 

...modern Americans tend to be ignoramuses about stuff that really matters. My parents - and laborers and taxi drivers - could quote Jefferson, Lincoln, FDR, Adam Smith and Marx. Today, do young folks even know Groucho?

 

It really does matter, as to whether we can save the American Experiment. Because you will help the current struggle better - in this era of benighted, shallow education - if you actually know something. 

For example, can any of you call to mind words by Thomas Paine, who almost single-handedly rallied the dispirited American Revolutionaries amid their deepest despair, during times that try men's souls?*

(Here you go, making the assignment just a bit easier to swallow.)

And yes... this could be practically useful. Maybe Paine will help you to slap sense into those 'summer soldiers' you know. Supposed liberals who are throwing up their hands and wailing in smug resignation that all-is-lost!

Again, we need reminders that today’s crises ‘rhyme’ with the past. 

Because none of this is without precedent. The very same cultural/psychological rift has riven the USA since 1778, when Cornwallis knew he'd find more romantics - more loyalists to the King - down south. 

The 1860s "Civil War" was only Phase Four out of eight or nine times this basic culture rift has erupted. See Civil War Phases. 

This current phase differs in some ways -- former issues of independence or slavery are now replaced by immigration, and zillionaire lucre-grabbing, and KGB puppetry... but above-all anti-modernist hatred toward every single fact-using profession, from science and law all the way to the US military officer corps. (Watch any evening of Fox and you'll see; the main theme is spite toward smartaleck professionals.) 

Moreover, this time the confederates have found the foreign backers that Jeff Davis couldn’t, back in the 1860s. In their pal, “ex” commissar Putin and his “ex” KGB and “ex” commie oligarchs and their petro-prince and inheritance-brat allies. 

Oh, and sure, the Union's nadir is deeper, this time, than it was even in 1862, as this time the Confederacy captured Washington D.C. -- and is now dismantling every single strength that made America, since 1945, the greatest nation of all ages.

Of course, it will not stand. Whether our path ahead starts with a General Strike by all of the nation's smart people -- and 100 million others who are wise enough to value smart people...

 

...or else a critical mass of vestigially-loyal conservatives wake up to realize that they are killing the goose that laid all their golden eggs... 

 

...or leaks gush from the mountain of blackmail kompromat that keeps GOP politicians in-line... 

 

... however it happens, we'll be back! (As one of those vestigially loyal Rebublicans would say)...

 

...  though it must begin with the Union getting new generals, as it did in 1863. Leaders capable of devising fresh tactics.

 

It could start by rediscovering Thomas Paine! If any of you have any spine, curiosity, attention span or ANY sense of history, go now and read The American Crisis and Common Sense! The two short pamphlets that inspired those first US revolutionaries -- wet and shivering by a frozen river -- to stand back up and shout "No Kings!" 

 

You might also rediscover Frederick Douglass, while you are at it... before it's too late and we must (alas) rediscover John Brown.

== Or rediscover the same spirit in sci fi! ==

Or start with Robert Heinlein, who denounced precisely this exact same recurring cult madness! 

 “It is a truism that almost any sect, cult, or religion will legislate its creed into law if it acquires the political power to do so, and will follow it by suppressing opposition, subverting all education to seize early the minds of the young, and by killing, locking up, or driving underground all heretics. This is equally true whether the faith is Communism or Holy-Rollerism; indeed it is the bounden duty of the faithful to do so. The custodians of the True Faith cannot logically admit tolerance of heresy to be a virtue."

Do follow the link and see more about how Heinlein -- too long maligned as some kind of right-winger fanatic -- was keenly aware -- and worried -- about the fascist/confederate/know-nothing, modernity-hating side of America's deeply rifted character. Its forever cultural schism!

"Throw in a Depression for good measure, promise a material heaven here on earth, add a dash of anti-Semitism, anti-Catholicism, anti-Negrosim, and a good large dose of anti-“furriners” in general and anti-intellectuals here at home, and the result might be something quite frightening – particularly when one recalls that our voting system is such that a minority distributed as pluralities in enough states can constitute a working majority in Washington."

Jiminy!  Heinlein wrote that in the early 1950s! Is there anything he did not hit right on the head? Heck, he even nailed the dominionist "Prosperity Gospel" so popular among Ted Cruz types, promising fervid followers that their "material heaven here on earth" will come by righteously seizing the property of unbelievers. (Late note: a prosperity gospel preacher keynotes Donald Trump's inauguration.)

In Heinlein's Future History, America's "Crazy Years" were followed by a vicious theocracy. One that Margaret Atwood directly cribbed for The Handmaid's Tale. One that - in his SF timeline - we only manage to escape through a REVOLT IN 2100.

Oh, I have confidence it won't take that long. Though now we must gird ourselves for a tough fight.

== But it will happen ==

Right now, the confederate side of American nature -- anti-modernity since the 1770s -- cannot conceive that their blue neighbors have any gumption or guts. But they should consider what Sam Houston said, when he urged Texans not to join the Confederacy, in 1861. That:

 “Our Northern cousins are cooler in spirit and slower to anger, but when finally roused will respond with implacable momentum.”

Texans ignored his wisdom, as today’s MAGAs ignore the utter illogic of waging all-out war vs ALL fact using professions, from science and teaching, medicine and law and civil service to the heroes of the FBI/Intel/Military officer corps who won the Cold War and the War on terror.

 But you can point this out: 

"Hey neighbors. Fact folks – (call us ‘nerds’) – are cooler in spirit. (And those who own guns keep them locked-up.) But fortunately, America won most civil war phases, when confederate fevers raged… and after winning, delivered ‘malice toward none and charity for all.’ 

A neighborly kindness that will NOT be shown to us, if the Project 2025 Trumpist brownshirts win.

So go ahead and march and chant and wave signs. 

Perhaps spread word about the coming, inevitable, General Strike by every fact using profession of folks who actually know stuff.

 

 The confeds'll sneer: "So? who will process and deliver your food?"

 

 And you'll answer: "A doctor can drive a truck and the folks sending you electricity can kill and pluck chickens. Let's see you do the opposite."

 

Still, we will never win without new generals, as when the Union moved from 1862 to 1863. 

 

And YOU will play no role in devising new tactics, till you try. Please try. Start by actually studying the context, the history, the basis for it all.

== Pictures are more persuasive ==

Look at the faces of Trump & Lavrov & Kisliak in January 2017, Trump's first guests in the Oval Office, long before any ally, giggling that the USA had fallen to them. Read the caption. And remember Trump raving that he "fell in love' with Kim Jong Un. And none of you can name - on a bet - any serious action by old Two Scoops that ever set back even a single interest or desire or command of Vladimir Putin, as he steadily rebuilds the USSR.

 

What would Reagan think?

This is why almost all of DT's former national security folks, from Defense and State to intel agencies to serving officers called him a direct threat to the nation. 

Those folks will all be arrested, across the next year. And already, among all of Trump's appointments, there will be no further 'adults in the room.

The adults will have to be us. In a coalition that values the pragmatic return of law and facts and tolerance and progress... but also grit. The grit that's always core to being Blue.

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* Or were you so triggered that I quoted Paine using the word "men's" that it drove all else from your mind? Proving that you... yes exactly you... are the problem that shattered Kamala's coalition and put us in this mess.  Exactly you.