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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
The concern of any liberty-minded individual American should not be focused on what “nice patriotic glaze” might be attached to current efforts to preserve our united republic but rather on the emerging threat intent on the republic’s destruction. Are you unfamiliar with Stalin and the murderous Communist regimes he headed? Do you have no vision of where the progressives of the Democrat Party are striving to take America? The Democrat Party does not view the U.S. Constitution and the Bill of Rights with favor and looks upon its guarantees of individual rights with disdain. It took the Founders almost 25 years from the initial Virginia Resolutions responding to the Stamp Act in 1765 before we had the United States of America with the Constitution in 1789. Patrick Henry made his first speech in 1765 against the Stamp Act that got him labeled as traitorous. We know him as a patriot.
This post is suggesting reactionary measures to keep the freedom developed in over two centuries of work and resist throwing that away to follow the hollow Marxists ideas,
Do you see the two specific examples used as “about cultural attitudes and changes in culture?”
Do you see the very limited and specific tie used to the Revolutionary period as “patriotic glaze?”
Exactly. Clearly there must be strategies, especially early on among the initial participants, to address the various resistances. Thanks.
There are signs of life out there:
I hope Texas is already working on that embassy in South Dakota.
A pulse:
It might be good to force the issue now, rather than later. Let’s see how serious Biden is about this.
Force it early and often. (I’d like to see “sanctuary states” and “sanctuary counties” popping up on every one of his EOs.)
Could it (finally) be a red-county movement:
It would be nice if the news was filled with hundred (or thousands) of counties drawing this red line. And then many other red lines too.
Here’s to small beginnings:
Hear, hear! Let’s raise a glass to the good folks of Newton County, MO.