Dangerous days in freedomland

There is no such thing as a government of a minority over a majority that does not end in repression and violence. Because in the end, that is the only way — the *only* way — that a minority can over a substantial period of time impose their will upon a minority — at gunpoint.

Saddam Hussein knew this. Saddam sent his army into the streets to shoot people down who opposed his rule. His secret police had torture dungeons. Horrific torture dungeons, that would torture the pre-pubescent children of his political opponents in their presence until they broke down and gave him everything he wanted, everything they were. When there were riots against his rule, the soldiers and the police would come, and then the lamp posts swung heavy with the strange fruit of the dead, swaying gently in the wind.

Saddam Hussein knew. That is why he was not overthrown by his own people, despite his Tikriti clan being a minority ruling over a much larger majority: he knew that the only way that a minority can rule over a majority is at gunpoint via repression and violence.

But see, here’s the thing: All systems that impose rule of a minority over a majority eventually end up there. There is no system of governance anywhere on the planet that has ever imposed the rule of a minority over a majority without a daily price of blood. Whether it was the brutal rule of the Norman knights over their Anglo-Saxon subjects in medieval England, or the brutal rule of the Russian aristocracy over their serfs in Peter the Great’s Russia, or the brutal rule of the KKK and White Leagues over the black population of the American South in the period from 1865 to after WW2, the only way — the only way — for a minority to rule long term over a majority is via violence, violence and repression so brutal, so savage, as to cause people’s heart to desert them.

We are in dangerous territory here in the United States today. Twice over the past sixteen years, a minority has imposed their will over the majority to attain near-absolute power. They did this via a system designed for a much earlier era and a much different nation, a nation that at the time was more thirteen nations than one nation, a nation that at the time was more of a confederation of equals than a single unitary state. They did this via a system that was designed at a time when the individual states each had their own individual armies, their own individual navies, their own individual currencies even in many cases. That is not our nation today, which is held together by a powerful Federal government that has subsumed most of the power that the states once held.

When it was done once, in 2000, it could be waved off as an aberration. 500,000 votes, after all, is not many in the greater scheme of things. It could be argued that yes, the majority lost, but it wasn’t that big a majority that lost, the two sides were kind of equal so it was just luck of the draw. But in 2016, the majority lost by winning by over 2,700,000 votes. 2.7 million votes is not an aberration. 2.7 million votes is not luck of the draw. 2.7 million votes is a clear majority.

For the moment, things have attained a state of near-normalcy. In part that is because the new minority government has not taken power yet, has not taken power and started imposing its will upon the majority yet. Yet once they do, there will come a day of decision. Will those of us in the successful states, the states that are thriving and which subsidize the failed red states (none of whom are self sufficient financially other than Texas), continue to be satisfied subsidizing people who hate us and want to continue looting us to subsidize their own failure? Or will there come a time when there must be a line drawn in the sand, and consequences if it continues?

Because bear this in mind: None of the failed states are self-sufficient. Texas is close, but Texas is alone. People say, “well, how will California feed itself without Kansas?” Answer: Quite well, thank you, since we produce more food than any other state and are the largest exporter of food in the United States. In fact, Kansas is the state that might have trouble feeding itself. Nobody grows food in Kansas anymore. All the agricultural land in Kansas is owned by vast agri-business companies, all of which sell food to the highest bidder. If the highest bidder is New York or New Jersey, that is where the food will go, leaving none for Kansas. The only reason Kansas eats today is because we in the successful states send them money for food stamps and Medicaid and Social Security and so forth, allowing them to buy food from the giant agribusinesses, because family farms don’t exist in Kansas anymore. If that money is cut off, how will the people in Kansas buy food from the giant agribusiness companies? Or will they simply take that food at gunpoint? Which I suppose they could do, but it would be a one-time thing, because the agribusinesses would simply not grow food on that land the next year. Why should they, if their profits are to be seized at gunpoint by barbarians?

Meanwhile, the only problem we’d have in California would be that Los Angeles and San Diego would have some serious water issues due to a cutoff of water from the Colorado River. But we’d still be self-sufficient in food, because the Central Valley, where most of our food is grown, gets no water from out of state. And what we don’t need, we can buy. For that matter, do you really think that the insolvent state of Arizona, cut off from its money subsidies that allow it to survive, would not agree to sell Colorado River water to California in exchange for money to keep itself afloat?

And what of guns, you say? These states are awash in guns and awash in veterans, you say? Well, that is fine and dandy. Those guns are a long ways away from California, and there is a big desert between here and there. Who will pay to move all those people across the desert to attack California? After all, the failed states are bankrupt without the money we here in the successful states send to them as transfer payments. They have no money to pay soldiers. They have no money to hire trucks and buy fuel to haul soldiers. They have no money to buy food to feed soldiers. They would be in the situation of the Confederate States of America in 1864, where 3/4ths of the soldiers who were supposedly in their armies had instead deserted, gone home, because of lack of pay and lack of food. If every soldier who had been drafted into the Confederate armies had stayed there, the Confederacy would have fielded armies the size of the Union armies, fully capable of defending their nation. But they couldn’t keep those soldiers in their armies. They were bankrupt and starving. There was no food, no money other than freshly printed monopoly money of no value that would buy nothing, there was not, in the end, anything to keep those people in their armies.

Will it come to that? I hope not. But that is the end game, when a minority tries to impose its rule on a majority. We are in dangerous times now, and if we are not careful, the blood will flow. That is not something I want, that is just a statement of reality, reality as taught to us by thousands of years of human history. Subjects can be kept under rule only so long before the situation degrades to one of violence and bloodshed. You may as well rant against the rain, as against that fact of nature.

– Badtux the Apocalyptic Penguin