These two words,
“The Coup” are a litmus test or shibboleth
that illuminates, but does not define the major factions into which
our society has devolved.
Watching
American society in great depth and detail for decades reveals the
deep currents that most people simply accept without notice, like the
air they breathe.
We are approaching
what is perhaps the most dangerous historical nexus in the last two
or three generations, and so a meta-analytical estimate of the
situation, as of early January 2020 is important.
American society has
always existed as kaleidoscopic factions. The current conditions are
such that they have tended to polarize, lumping together into three
mega factions. Almost everyone knows deep down which faction they
most sympathize with, whether they’ve examined the matter or not.
It would take a book
to analyze the history and underpinning of the thing, and that would
be out of scope for this meta analysis.
First, the factions:
Two of the factions stand in opposition to each other.
For lack of a better word, we’ll describe them as “the combatant
factions”, which is less awkward on the tongue than the perhaps
more accurate “factions in opposition”. They can be fairly
characterized thus:
They operated
from different, and incompatible first principles.
Accordingly,
they do not agree on compatible, objective descriptions of reality,
without any respect to the degree of accuracy of those descriptions.
(This is why “The Coup” serves as a convenient phrase that
distinguishes them.)
Finally,
neither faction will accept the dominion of the other.
It is
crucial to understand that these factions run in parallel to,
but are not the major political parties. The parties are
under the firm control of an elite, whose highest priority is their
own power, and which mine and exploit their constituent factions for
their own purposes. The significant gap between the factions and the
parties has been gradually dawning on the people for the last couple
of decades, as measurements of people’s trust in government
institutions erodes.
The third faction is
a bit of a mixed bag, into which people fall by default. “Centrist”
is probably a bad label, it implies things that don’t pertain, and
misses elements that are important. Their primary shared
characteristic is that no matter which way they lean, they would
prefer not to spend much energy on the matter, and would rather dwell
in their ordinary, mundane lives and business: family, kids, jobs,
sports and BBQ, accepting without too much question the conditions
they find themselves in, and a sometimes inconsistent smorgasbord of
beliefs and a mishmash of components offered by both of the factions
in opposition. While they may be slightly skeptical of the
propaganda they sit entirely immersed in, they are content to let
“authorities” and institutions define reality for them, so long
as their demands are not too outrageous. The parties vie for the
affections of this faction, and their tendency to let the press
define reality for them makes control of the mass media a force
multiplier for whoever has their hand on the wheel.
Across all three
factions, confidence in institutions, governmental and otherwise is
collapsing. Despite unanimity on this, each faction has their own
entirely different take on it, and a profoundly different story and
mythology to explain it. Because our political system lacks any
effective way to register a vote of “no confidence”, the people
themselves have begun expressing such no confidence votes in as many
ways as they can invent. This is manifesting paradoxically in acts of
both defiance and compliance to everything from police brutality to
lockdown orders and facemask wearing. All factions have also sensed
danger coming, and have tooled up, buying every fighting gun and
round of ammunition in inventory, and continue to buy them as soon as
they roll off the production line.
That’s the
background. Under these conditions, it is fair to question at an
ethical level as to whether “the consent of the governed” can be
said to exist, and also to question whether our institutions are even
capable of carrying consent as they stand.
Now as to the
shibboleth:
“The Coup” means entirely different things
to the combatant factions.
One faction’s
meaning pertains to Trump’s refusal to accept Biden’s electoral
accomplishment, which they view as defying the authentic and
legitimate expression of the democratic will of the people. To them,
“Democracy is at stake”.
The other
factions’ meaning pertains to viewing this electoral feat as
poisoned fruit of a broken, fraud infested process for which no
legal remedy has been, or can be obtained. To them, if this election
stands, voting is meaningless, and “Democracy is at stake”.
The non-combatant
faction, as is their way, may or may not be sympathetic to either
position, but is willing to live with a Biden administration despite
their reservations as the price of carrying on life and business as
usual.
Continuing with the
estimate of our political situation:
No government
institution will take any action that will be perceived as
“overturning the election”, and as such, the forms and ceremonies
of Democracy (r)(c)™ will unfold resulting in a Biden
administration, which may be tolerated, but will not be accepted
as legitimate by the whole of one faction, and a
great many of the non combatant faction will view the matter with
skepticism. This fact of
Biden taking office will be used by each combatant faction as proof
of the validity of their position. One faction will claim that that
because the courts did not intervene to stop the inauguration
indicates that fraud did not exist, and thus ratifies the legitimacy
of the election of 2020, and the other will cite it as a flat out
failure of our institution’s existential
capacity to correct the fraud
that did exist.
Obviously,
this will turn on RealityFact as to the actual happening of fraud, a
matter which is now plowed under into oblivion, despite
the existence of thousands of links to thousands
of events, all of which have been dismissed as “unsubstantiated”.
One
faction will state that recounting votes is pointless, because it
will not change the free and fair outcome, and the other faction will
agree that it is pointless to
repeatedly count fraudulent
votes for which no audit is possible.
There is also the
potential for the eruption of factional violence:
Our current
state of low key political violence, which is not well reported,
will continue, ebbing and flaring in response to current events.
If Trump
retains office, eruption of violence will be instigated by the
faction that opposes him immediately. The violence will be
widespread, but relatively shallow, and mostly contained to the
urban areas scoped out by antagonist and aligned groups over the
summer.
If Biden is
inaugurated, eruption of violence will depend largely on the actions
of the Biden administration. Heavy handed approaches will be met
with greater defiance, alienating increasing swathes of society. The
opportunity to entirely suborn society in the fashion once
undertaken by Woodrow Wilson no longer exists, and attempting
anything like that will stretch American’s good natured tolerance
past the breaking point.
The bottom line is
that one faction has a definitive upper hand in this, and desperately
wants their apparent victory to be ratified as legitimate, and sealed as the Official Reality. That legitimacy
will be denied by the other faction, Biden’s* name will forever
have and asterisk after it, and that leaves us as close to a state of
nature as we’ve ever been in my lifetime.
Speaking
of lifetimes, my father passed last spring, as a consequence of old
age and a full life well lived. We’d often talked about politics,
aligning in some dimensions and disagreeing in others. In our final
discussion, Dad indicated disgust, sad that the country he knew,
loved and fought for was gone, and somewhat relieved he would be
spared witnessing its final collapse. He also indicated remorse,
wishing he had left us a better legacy, a nation actually able to
deliver on the promises of its founding. I think he found some
comfort in the thought I’d conveyed that he had no more power than
I to change the course of events, and that responsibility is
impossible without power. Standing to be counted on the side of free
humanity was enough.
