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Parallel Dissident Structures: The Vanguard of Liberty
States like Florida and Texas need to start talking about binding together and opening Embassies abroad and issuing passports. – Michael Yon, January 25, 2021
A month ago, after re-reading The Power of the Powerless yet again, I posted some initial thoughts on “dissident movements” and “parallel structures” from Havel’s wonderful lecture. I suspect the evolution of these concepts to our more modern times and “advanced” (i.e. progressive) civilization will become an important path forward for this experiment in self-government but, before I go on, a few bits of commentary to better set the current stage.
First, from an excellent summary by Don Surber on January 22:
The Donald was their final warning
[Quoting Glenn Reynolds]: “Nothing says, ‘This was a perfectly normal election, and now it’s time to come together as a united nation,’ like having your swearing-in behind 12-foot-high razor wire surrounded by 25,000 troops whose loyalty you doubt. That’s what we witnessed at President Biden’s inauguration on Wednesday: a grim testament to the fundamental insecurity and fragility of the re-ascendant liberal elite. …the whole aura was less Lincoln and more bananas. As in banana republic.” …
…2 weeks before the inauguration, 100,000 people showed up at the national mall for the largest Trump rally ever.
And maybe 100 of them showed up at the Capitol, and our overlords freaked out. Someone opened the gates on the gatekeepers. Congressmen crawled into their safe places.
They finally saw the will of the people and they did not like what they saw. They called it an insurrection. How dare these Trump people walk into the People’s House like that! …
It was a mess. When the all-clear signal went out, the cowards in Congress were in a huff. They did their usual Blame Trump routine and even impeached him.
But we all know two things.
1. Congress is scared.
2. Congress should be.
The people have had it. …
I submit that Donald Trump was their last chance. He was nice. He tried to play by their rules. … Oh, they won’t get another Trump. … If history is correct, they will not like what comes next. No indeed they won’t.
[Emphasis added]
Second, from Redstate just a day ago:
The past week has perhaps been one of the most revealing weeks in modern history. The extent to which the system was exposed for what it is, on multiple fronts, probably won’t be matched again for at least a little while. And while the blatant market manipulation that went on to try to protect hedge funds from retail investors was certainly a big part of that, something else happened that really put the cherry on top of this terrible sundae.
…former FBI lawyer Kevin Clinesmith, who was working with Robert Mueller, was given probation and a $100 administrative fee for his role in falsifying an email to renew the already illegally obtained FISA warrant on Carter Page. …
Out of all the nefarious, obviously corrupt figures surrounding this saga, Clinesmith was the only one charged. Figures like Andrew McCabe and James Comey were named in credible criminal referrals, not by politicians, but by the Inspector General, and the DOJ did nothing. In the end, Clinesmith got sentenced for less jail time (in this case none) than George Papadopoulos, whose only “crime” was mixing up a date on a harmless meeting he still admitted to having. To recap, you can forget a date talking to the FBI and have a special counsel crack your skull, but if you work for the FBI, forge a document, and lie about it in order to try to spy on a political opponent, you get probation and glowing media coverage. Laughably, it’s not even a long probation period either. Single mothers caught with weed in their car have gotten more than 12 months probation. …
Again, the game is rigged. There are two justice systems, two financial systems, and any many ways, two political systems. One group gets to do things the other group simply doesn’t get to do. If you try to mess up their status quo, the hammer comes down. If they get caught, it’s pillow fluffs and pats on the head. This is how you got Donald Trump in the first place, and it’s why the populist undertones of our current moment are not going away.
[Emphasis added]
Having already saddled this post with such extended quotes I will resist further pressing on just how openly corrupt the system and power players in it are other than noting this: Nancy Pelosi buys 1 Million in Telsa days before Biden announces Government contract with Tesla. (If you are not sold on that yet, just wait until the joke that is the Senate Ethics Committee confirms that this is all just fine.)
These dire situations along with the quote from Mr. Yon above and the writings of Vaclav Havel took me to the most obvious destination during my morning coffee today: Chapter 4 of Blink by Malcolm Gladwell titled: Paul Van Riper’s Big Victory: Creating Structure for Spontaneity. (Having read this in early 2010, it was obviously fresh on my mind.) I won’t recount the full details here but the short story is that in the largest war game in history pitting the most advanced military and technology against a rogue third-world force (Riper), the underdog didn’t just accept the inferior position inside the rigged system he was given and he refused to behave the way the rigged system assumed he would. Instead, he went old school, played by his rules, and put 16 American ships on the bottom of the Persian Gulf on the second day of the exercise. Among the key lessons are: get ahead of the game (i.e. establish structures that favor your side) and behave in ways that benefit your side. I posit there are lessons in there for Red-State (and Red-County) America in the coming days.
The other lesson worth including here reaches back to those revolutionary times of 1775. A book by that name is a favorite reference of mine for better context. Here, the author is leading into a discussion of the states beyond just Massachusetts and Virginia of popular lore that formed the vanguard of the build-up to history:
That these were the two most important provinces in 1774-1775 is clear. The caveat is that trite telling has brought about oversimplified explanations and unjustifiable omissions. Several other colonies played more forward roles than chroniclers typically note. … – Page 39
The discussion that follows is worth your time to explore. Here, I’ll just apply this lesson to the Yon quote at the top of the page and say that it will take more than just Texas and Florida to drive a real change of direction into the evolving American train wreck.
So this strange and very unlikely ramble from Havel to Gladwell to 1775 brings me back to where I wanted to go from the start. As Mr. Yon said, states need to start “binding together” but I think it is more in domestic terms and, in that Riper-ian mindset, states must start thinking outside the game that obviously and intentionally is rigged against them. This should start with states opening embassies in like-minded states.
I know. I just lost nearly everyone there. “That is just plain silly,” you say. But I disagree.
States had better be planning to work together in groups tailored to individual issues. In forms modeled after the famed international bodies, there may be a G-4 for border issues or a G-7 (or G-22) for Second Amendment issues. There will likely be many more. (In case you haven’t noticed, individual governors and attorneys general will easily be crushed by the machine. And, in the latest developments, legal resources may need to be shared because of threats to professional/business futures by the totalitarians. But I digress.) And if anything has been learned since the weaponization of the federal agencies by the Obama administration, the states should trust no one and nothing out of DC. Again, by Havel’s guidance, these state group entities all must operate within the law / accepted practices of the current construct of the (former constitutional) Republic, but that doesn’t mean they have to let the FBI, the NSA, and MSNBC/CNN/FOXNEWS into their huddle. The future is going to require coordinated strategies and strength in numbers. This will require having the structures and trusted people in place to communicate and organize. The states that intend to be part of the team need to get ahead of the game.
Now, your turn. Tell me where I’m wrong…
Published in General
Exactly, there needs to develop, in whatever form, a network between both states and counties of shared values and goals. Not just that support but the exchange of ideas, plans of actions, methods , etc and the refinement that comes with that continuous discussion will create new and better way of fighting an uphill battle that of absolutely needed. It was committees of corspondence between colonies of differing natures but common views of freedom that grew what became our founding.
The type of “change” we now need so badly will never be supplied from the top down, it has to be grown, defined and spread from the ground up.
To have even a smidge of a pretense that some in the USA are for protecting Liberty, we need to cast aside the entire re-structuring of society that has come about due to the #Plandemic.
That a virus with an insignificant risk for 97% of the people under the age of 70, especially if the person is healthy, must dictate our society being locked down, masked up, and then “vaxxed” begs the question, “What is the indie scientists view of this ‘pandemic.'”
And every last one of those doctors and scientists who are not under the clutches of Bill Gates will tell us that there are at least six remedies that are effective to offer tor any individual who is infected by COVID. Give the population those remedies and our fatality rate would be 1/125th of what we’ve experienced.
The more onerous DC becomes the more there will be civil disobedience. When laws make criminals out of a majority the less they can be enforced . Take Interstate highway 26 out of Charleston. If the police attempted to cite everyone exceeding the speed limit there would be total gridlock. The limit is 65, traffic probably averages 80/85. Soon the left will turn on itself. More and more everyday citizens will become outlaws. Personally I think the flash point will be gun control. Gun Confiscation would now effect both sides and I don’t see it happening voluntary.
Just wait until people realize (remember) that they can collapse the entire western world by not paying their mortgage.
President Trump was the first president of our nation who was treated like any normal individual is treated under our system of “judicial wisdom.”
I have a friend whose son was kidnapped from her and her husband, in the 1980’s. The kidnapping was undertaken by an assistant district attorney in one of the No Calif counties.
It basically bankrupted her household to wage a successful war against the Powers That Were Established in that legal fiefdom. Finally after a protracted legal battle, the son was returned to his parents. But his abuse under the hands of that assistant district attorney were so horrific that he committed suicide shortly after his return.
“Dateline” or “48 hours” did an expose of another district attorney employee in the same area who was murdered by someone for the atrocities he had perpetrated against HS kids.
I have no idea if this was the same malicious individual or not. But the person taking the perp’s life was left alone, much like Boo in “”To Kill a Mockingbird,” because no one in that community would have found him guilty of anything.
Those who have the power and the evil intent can do as they desire. It takes carefully arranging the various agencies, law enforcers and judges in place, but once that is all set up, there is little if any justice for the individual.
This systemic injustice has become a reign of terror. Any here who support the “plandemic” are part of the problem: One reason for installing this mechanism of enslavement is to seize our children if we don’t comply with the atrocities they feel they have the right to inflict on us.
So far the atrocities have included:
Withholding the actual proven and effective remedies, while people die
Six feet of social distancing, while masked
A controlled media promoting the rioting of the period of May 31st to mid Oct 2020. That same controlled media dismissed complaints about the looting arson and murder as unnecessary as these activities were merely “peaceful protests.”
Lockdowns of small businesses while large corporate businesses operate much as before (Except for some customer who doesn’t mask up, as that individual might get arrested.)
The printing up and distribution of 80 million mail in ballots, as it was deemed far too dangerous to have citizens show up in person for the Nov 2020 election
The employee mandates forcing people to have an untested, rushed into production jabbed into their bodies. This med device is considered a “vaccine” but it is not. (If a real vaccine definition is considered.) The fatal lessons of what happened to the test animals in the earlier corona mRNA “vaccine” trials have been swept under the carpet, except for those people who care to really investigate the issue.
The slam against free speech undertaken by the social media forces. When the President of the US is banned from a social platform, that censorship shows it is game over for any free speech.
Stated much better in just over 100 words. (I guess that sixth cup of coffee pushed me into overdrive…just couldn’t stop babbling.)
For the record, I did briefly consider something more consolidated than a distributed network of state embassies…something along the lines of the United Nations model. Of course, the obvious name would be problematic. But I do still think a massive, bland metal building just outside of Wichita (or somewhere in flyover country) as a headquarters would be quite funny.
We experienced an unprecedented level of public hatred for a POTUS over the past four years. It is clear that there is a major power move underway by progressives, joined and supported by corporate oligarchs, public media, and academia. Intersectionality paired with social justice concepts is being used by those seeking dominion over all to solidify disadvantaged groups’ support for something sold to them as government by the collective. Those operating as group identity players are being taken advantage of once again. They have been nourished on hatred of America and the founding ideals based on individual liberty. For a century this progressive movement has been building and now they are making their push for absolute power. Much of what we are witnessing seems incredible and we think to ourselves, how did this happen? Here are two things that have facilitated this change: destruction of families and religion and educational indoctrination absent critical thinking processes.
I have been astounded over these last few years at the utterly asinine and stupid public policy measures put forth by Democrats and their leaders. I keep waiting, based on previous experiences, for some to rise up and object, as there is now talk of Machin and Sinema stopping some moves in the Senate.
All this reminds me: And now abideth faith, hope, charity, these three; but the greatest of these is charity. Love is charity but we are seeing hate.
I recall a passage where Chesterton’s Father Brown says: “People who lose all their charity generally lose all their logic.” Can this explain why all the followers of these power-seeking Democrats are themselves acting so senseless?
I’ve referred to Biological Leninism before https://youtu.be/qZvjNJxzevM. This is how the intersectionality of status disadvantaged groups insure they get higher status and their drive to retain that status solidifies loyalty to the ruling class that provides that status. It starts in the federal government in Washington. The same thing goes on in Academia. It even works in law enforcement.
The actions taken by the government in public education in response to the pandemic has created an opening that must be taken. The public education system must be re-invented.
Seems like a few decades ago, stock deals like Pelosi’s were backroom deals conducted in darkness and the only way we found out about them was through an honest press.
Now, the Dims don’t even try to hide it. It’s a bit of a case of “We are your lords and masters and there’s not a d*mn thing you can do about it.”
FIFY
But it mostly wasn’t an invention in the first place. It developed, in response to this and that interest group. One thing led to another. I question whether we know how to invent it if we don’t know how to undevelop it and/or fix it.
I follow the same general principle in regard to big, convoluted software projects. If people don’t know how to fix them and clean them up, they probably don’t know how to build them from scratch, either. I’ve seen people at high levels lose their high-paying jobs on the mistaken assumption that they could have a system rebuilt from scratch.
I suppose their are counterexamples. Many years ago I got a start at the workplace from which I eventually retired by taking a software for data analysis, throwing it out, and rebuilding it from scratch. (This was in the years before there were canned packages for doing such things.) But it had never been a functional, working system in the first place, which I think makes all the difference. And that software was still alive many years later, when I wished it had been dead and gone from obsoleteness, because people had built their workflow around it. They’d want a modification and I’d have to scratch my head and dig into old Fortran code that I hadn’t touched for years. I’d say, “You know, you could do everything that this software does using X, Y, and Z.” But when looking at it closely, it turned out it was never quite that simple. And they couldn’t afford the disruption. There is an old computer joke: Q. Why was God able to create the universe in 6 days? A. Because he didn’t have an installed base to consider.
Pretty hard to re-invent a system while millions of people are using it. You can’t tell people to just stop getting educated for a couple years while we figure out a new system. On the other hand, maybe covid-19 is telling us we can at least do the “stop getting educated” part.
That sounds rather Bolshevik.
And much more effective !
This is an important advancement in having the proles understand where in the Commie scheme of things their rightful place happens to be.
Only after several generations of workers have assisted in transforming the hell on earth created by the Capitalists into The Worker’s Paradise will the proles be given any status. (Except for the 20% or so who are good snitches and loyal party devotees.)
Bio-leninism is an intriguing and useful framework through which to view current political and cultural trends. More people should be aware of it.
Yes, that should be “House” instead of “Senate.”
So, what is coming next? This all just leaves me with a lot of questions.
Surber seems to want it both ways with the storming of the capitol. On one hand, he seems critical of Congress for fearing the protesters, and critical of them for calling it an insurrection, since it was only 100 that entered the capitol (not sure about that number), and then basically says, yes it was an insurrection and Congress should be scared. And not only that, but something worse is coming down the pike? But he also cites criticism of the security measures taken at the inauguration? This is not coherent. Is the far right just peacefully protesting within the system, or are they seriously planning some kind of insurrection? And what is the message, here? Is there a coherent governing philosophy behind this, or just a vague hatred of elites and their corruption?
Also, Surber believes the 1/6 protesters represent the “will of the people,” but what about the majority who did not want Trump re-elected? Are they not “the people?” They don’t count for some reason?
We have no way of knowing whether it was a majority even of the voters, much less the people.
It is known a large number of ‘votes’ counted were not legal, among them ‘votes’ by deceased, ‘votes’ by persons no longer resident where they ‘voted’ and ‘votes’ by wholly fictitious ‘voters’, some with addresses that are not allowed. We do not know the number because there has been no look to determine that number. Surber’s statement has as much possibility of being correct as wrong as long as we are ignorant of the facts. Pretending Biden got the ‘votes’ does not make it so.
The situation now, if I properly understand the complaints of the Trump-wing of the right, is very different than it was in 1775. The American colonists were resisting a particular government structure, and economic structure (mercantilism) which left them with very little political freedom. The Committees of Correspondence were set up in response to particular Acts of the government over which they had little or no control or even input. They weren’t challenging elites because they were elites, but because these particular elites were given royal and noble status by law. It was much less about cultural attitudes and changes in culture, especially media and academic culture, which seems to be the main complaints these days. I don’t think there is much that some kind of interstate or inter-county committees can do about those kinds of problems.
My concern is that references to the American Revolution are attempts to put a nice patriotic glaze on a cause that is much more vague, and much less worthy, than that of the Founders.
Ok, but what proof is there that Trump supporters represent “the will of the people?” They’ve never gotten the majority of any presidential vote, never appeared to have a majority in any substantial presidential popularity polling, nor have they been able to get majorities elected in Congress. I’m not saying Anti-Trumpers represent the “will of the people” either (I don’t think “will of the people,” has any real meaning and is almost always an attempt to steal unearned legitimacy). My main point is that if Trump supporters claim it, they disregard huge sections of the population.
I’m not sure there is such a thing as “the will of the people.” Some people want some things, and others want others. But sometimes a significant number of people whose influence is based less on money and socio-economic status and more on sheer numbers, come to rough agreement on some issues. We might call that “the will of the people.” There are assertions about the will of the people but there is never proof. Some of the assertions become convincing anyway, or at least influential.
You’re right about that. There are some particular issues that enough people roughly agree on such that you could call that agreement the “will of the people.” I don’t think those points come up in the argument very often, for that obvious reason. So, I’m still very skeptical whenever anyone invokes the will of the people, and I’m certain Surber is taking liberties with it here.
Perhaps, but the “public education system,” IMHO, has evolved into a “public indoctrination system.” What “education” that happens is usually done poorly, with mediocre results, and at great expense. Office jobs that used to require a HS diploma now require a 4-year college degree, simply because the HS diploma no longer means the person has a basic education. The “Covidian miasma” (h/t @jameslileks for the term) and the public school’s response in many places made clear that the public schools are firmly in the hands of the Left. They can’t be reformed.
(I know I’m painting with a broad brush here, and that there are many public schools that do a good job. My kids attended such schools. However, they still got a stiff shot of indoctrination into the Left’s pieties. I managed to counter some of this by reading them the Declaration, accounts of the Revolution, etc., before they entered school.)
United States Constitution, Article I
Section 8: Powers of Congress
The Congress shall have Power To lay and collect Taxes, Duties, Imposts and Excises, to pay the Debts and provide for the common Defence and general Welfare of the United States;
10th Amendment
The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.
Madison, Federalist 41, stated the general welfare clause is neither a statement of ends nor a substantive grant of power. I’ll add, the ‘Welfare of the United States’ does not include the States or the people, or the framers would have added these to the list. Instead, there is the 10th Amendment, helping to clarify this fact.
Therefore, the majority of the Federal Budget is spent illegally on direct and indirect payments to States, organizations, and people. Additionally, there are laws, too numerous to even begin to discuss here, that are unconstitutional. Every member of Congress who, having voted for such expenditures, or helped pass a law, outside the guidelines of the Constitution, is guilty of the failure to uphold their oath of office, and would rightly be impeached.
But what is our recourse, when the majority in Congress has figured out that they can buy votes via unconstitutional measures, with complete impunity? And neither the President, the Courts, or the States are inclined to stop them. Either the Federal government has limited powers, or the 10th Amendment is null and void. Events has brought us to a time where it is essentially the latter.
It seems only the people may hold them accountable. And as a nation, we’re doing a terrible job.
I think the single action that states can take to remove the issue that has held our attention since 11/3/2000 is for state legislatures to assert their Constitutional authority and directly appoint Presidential electors to the Electoral College. There is ample evidence that this was the intent of the Founders, i.e. that we have representative republican government since there is not a single mention of “our democracy” in our founding documents but frequent mention of representative republican government in discourses from that time and in the founding documents. I make this suggestion particularly since there seems to be no will among the powers that be in the federal government or the executive and judicial branches of many state governments to insure that the popular vote for electors is valid.
I agree that it has become a public indoctrination system, and that the indoctrination it does is bad for us. I just don’t think you fix it by destroying it first.
However, I do make an exception for the GOP. The way to fix that could very well be by destroying it.
Yes. Simple, but not easy. Almost all of the means of communication and organizing above the neighborhood level rely upon digital information systems that make use of microwave bandwidth which is easily monitored by domestic surveillance agencies. Most cell phone and internet traffic is ignored, but that doesn’t mean it can’t be actively monitored, collected and used to suppress dissent.
Mind you, I’m not disagreeing with your premise. But I am preaching caution, and anticipating that there will be aggressive institutional resistance to any effective moves by the citizenry to establish parallel institutions of state sovereignty.
Yes, and they should be able to do this without facing a veto from any governors, as governors are not part of the legislatures.
“Each State shall appoint, in such Manner as the Legislature thereof may direct, a Number of Electors, equal to the whole Number of Senators and Representatives to which the State may be entitled in the Congress: but no Senator or Representative, or Person holding an Office of Trust or Profit under the United States, shall be appointed an Elector.”