Right. Well, here we are. I shall doubtless have much to say in the coming weeks—if I am spared, which is never certain. (I have, if I can afford it, a stress test later this month. The Constitution has four years of it come 20 JAN.) For now, I suggest soul-searching to the Criers of Wolf and the Belloc’s Matildas (‘Matilda told such Dreadful Lies, / It made one Gasp and Stretch one’s Eyes … For every time She shouted ‘Fire!’ / They only answered “Little Liar”! / And therefore when her Aunt returned, / Matilda, and the House, were Burned’). This is self-inflicted on your parts. Thanks for the sour persimmons, damn you.
Meanwhile, I advert you to these:
https://www.persuasion.community/p/the-dawn-of-the-trump-era
and
https://www.persuasion.community/p/an-unthinkable-plunge—at once.
When, after the Soviet archives were opened, a vindicated Robert Conquest issued a new and revised edition of The Great Terror: Stalin’s Purge of the Thirties, he titled it, The Great Terror: A Reassessment … denying himself the pleasure of releasing it, as Kingsley Amis suggested, under the title, I Told You So, You Fucking Fools.
The Democratic Party has finally succeeded in its long suicide. (Those in charge have risked taking down the Republic with them.) The Republican Party was smothered with a My Pillow in 2015-2016. The Constitution survives. Thus far. To ensure that it does survive is our duty. To do that, the Left must be read out of the Democratic Party before we turn to snatching Republican brands from the burning: everyone to the Left of Classical Liberalism must be defenestrated. They can hold somnolent protests around a diverse drum circle in the reek of stale bong-water and be ignored. There are good, decent, Liberty-loving Republicans: I know many of them, from State district judges in Texas to—speaking of thankless tasks—town selectmen in Connecticut; and they are needed. Both parties must be purged of their scum; only adherence to the Constitution as we have received it and to the principles of the Founders can effect this.
You’re damned right I’m kicking people while they’re down. To get them on their feet. Stop whining, damn it. There’s work to do.
Markham Shaw Pyle, author & historian 