Codevilla's Dark Forecast: The Revolution's Progress

Angelo Codevilla is not a sunny optimist.  (Side-note:  has it really been EIGHT YEARS since his 'ruling class' essay?  Oh, man........)  In a lengthy essay, he describes The Revolution we are undergoing, and his prognosis of the end-game.  (NB:  his essay was written before the last elections.)

...Prior to the 2016 election I explained how America had already “stepped over the threshold of a revolution,” that it was “difficult to imagine how we might step back, and futile to speculate how it might end.” Regardless of who won the election, its sentiments’ growing “volume and intensity” would empower politicians on all sides sure to make us nostalgic for Donald Trump’s and Hilary Clinton’s moderation. Having begun, this revolution would follow its own logic.

What follows dissects that logic. It has unfolded faster than foreseen. Its sentiments’ spiraling volume and intensity have eliminated any possibility of “stepping back.”...

You may be pleased to know that this is not the first time the Losers attempt to criminalize policy differences.  Codevilla reminds us of Corcyra, back in 427 BC (just before I was born..)  It did not end well for Corcyra, nor his opponents.  (Hint:  there were a lot of body-bags.)

Codevilla moves on to the US's situation:

...The American republic’s essence had been self-restraint toward fellow citizens deemed equals. The Constitution of 1787 had been its paradigm. Under its words and by its laws, Americans had enjoyed safety and predictability for themselves and their way of life. But Progressives’ subordination of the Constitution, laws, and institutions to their own purposes and for their own primacy ended all that. The rest of America’s increasing realization that only fire can fight fire has followed naturally.

This is our revolution: Because a majority of Americans now no longer share basic sympathies and trust, because they no longer regard each other as worthy of equal consideration, the public and private practices that once had made our Republic are now beyond reasonable hope of restoration. Strife can only mount until some new equilibrium among us arises....

Ugh.

Codevilla goes on to underline that it is not only the Progressives' policy goals which produce this growing animosity; it is rather their conviction that they are the true and only arbiters of morality; that they are simply superior beings; that the resisters are "deplorables."  This is not going to inspire co-operation.

Codevilla maintains that the Current Revolution more-or-less began in 2008 with the Progressive/Elite bailout of the Banks, GM, and Chrysler.  I disagree; I think that the Revolution's first seeds were planted in the horrific Roe v. Wade decision which made it clear that something was radically wrong with this polity, the USA.  And as we will see, the Left/Progressive revolt against Nature grows over time, with each step producing more resistance from the 'deplorables'.

Here he talks about the effects of the Bailout of the banks, GM, and Chrysler:

...This forced the recognition that there exists a remarkably uniform, bipartisan, Progressive ruling class; that it includes, most of the bureaucracies of federal and state governments, the judiciary, the educational establishment, the media, as well as major corporate officials; that it had separated itself socially, morally, and politically from the rest of society, whose commanding heights it monopolized; above all that it has contempt for the rest of America, and that ordinary Americans have no means of persuading this class of anything, because they don’t count....

Whether that was Roe ruling or the Bailout, the effects were identical.  In fact, Codevilla hints at religion having something to do with this:

...In our time, the most widespread of differences between rulers and ruled is also the deepest: The ruled go to church and synagogue. The rulers are militantly irreligious and contemptuous of those who are not. Progressives since Herbert Croly’s and Woodrow Wilson’s generation have nursed a superiority complex. They distrust elections because they think that power should be in expert hands—their own. They believe that the U.S Constitution gave too much freedom to ordinary Americans and not enough power to themselves, and that America’s history is one of wrongs. The books they read pretend to argue scientifically that the rest of Americans are racist, sexist, maybe fascists, but above all stupid. For them, Americans are harmful to themselves and to the world, and have no right to self-rule. That is why our revolution started from a point more advanced in its logic than many others....

Just as important as Roe is what Codevilla incorporates into the narrative here:

...The anti-establishment “wave elections” of 2010 and 2014, in which the Democratic Party lost Congress and control of a majority of state legislatures, only led America’s Progressive rulers to double down on their positions of power in the judiciary, the media, corporations, etc. The Supreme Court struck down a referendum by liberal California defining marriage as the union of one man and one woman. The federal Defense of Marriage Act, which had become law by near-unanimity, was overturned bureaucratically and judicially. The Religious Freedom Restoration Act, on the books just as firmly, was undone by executive, judicial, bureaucratic, corporate, and mediatic subordination of religious freedom to anti-discrimination. By the 2016 election, America’s Progressive rulers were demonizing and punishing persons who define male and female by their birth and personal plumbing....

Going back to that 'religion' matter:  it is no longer taken as an insult when one describes another as 'atheist' or 'Godless.'   In fact, such an appellation is considered to be complimentary--by the Elite.  And do not be fooled by the 'going-to-church' charade.  There IS such a thing as Practical Atheism, and it exists--nay, flourishes--in affluent societies.  Who needs God and His heaven, when we live there already?  And the 'God thing' has everything to do with Roe and homosex marriage, not to mention the binary of sex (not "gender.")

.....The 2016 election’s primaries were all about the American people’s search for means of de-throning increasingly insufferable rulers. Even on the Democratic side, many bridled at their self-serving unaccountability. But since the Democrats are the party of government, it was clear that protection from and vengeance against the existing power structure would have to come from the nominal opposition party. Yet the Republicans were very much part of the problem. That is why 2016’s real struggle took place within the Republican primaries, the most enduringly significant fact of which is that Jeb Bush, the candidate most closely identified with the Progressive ruling class, spent some $150 million and secured only three convention delegates. Americans in general, and Republicans in particular, were looking for the polar opposite.

Donald Trump was out of central casting—seemingly a caricature of what the ruling class said about its opponents. But the words he spoke were less significant than that he spoke with angry contempt for the ruling class. That—and the crowded field that never allowed a head-to-head choice—is what got him the chance to be the alternative to the ruling class. And that is what got him elected President of the United States....

He should have spoken that way.  Tucker Carlson is now saying the things that Trump implied.  While Carlson is far smoother, he is just as angry, and just as justified--and Carlson goes deeper into the cause of the malaise.   That said, Trump is the target--so far; note well, there are no regnant Establishment politicians who have spoken out like Carlson on the matters which count; Trump hasn't gone there either, although he lit the fire.

...The “resistance” subsequent to the election surprises, in part, because only as it has unfolded have we learned of its scope prior to the election. All too simply: the U.S government’s upper echelons merged politically with the campaign of the Democratic Party’s establishment wing, and with the media. They aimed to secure the establishment candidates’ victory and then to nullify the lost election’s results by resisting the winners’ exercise of legitimate powers, treating them as if they were illegitimate. The measure of the resistance’s proximate success or failure would come in the 2018 elections.

Partisan “dirty tricks” are unremarkable. But when networks within government and those who occupy society’s commanding heights play them against persons trying to unseat them, they constitute cold civil war against the voters, even coups d’etat. What can possibly answer such acts? And then what?...

The Kristallnacht engineered in Wisconsin by the Elite Left, along with the 6-year screaming-fest of the hysterical public-union membership in Madison, should have been fair warning to Trump, his allies, and his supporters.  With the Feds, it's scaled up quite a bit, but not really different except for the midnight armed raids on wives and children which happened only in Wisconsin.  So far.

...These people, including longstanding officials of the FBI and CIA, are related to one another intellectually, morally, professionally, socially, financially, politically, maritally, and extra-maritally. Their activities to stop the anti-establishment candidate, and president—in this case, Trump—have spanned the public and private realms, and involved contacts in Britain and Australia. They enjoy The Washington Post’s, The New York Times’, the Associated Press’s, CBS’, NBC’s,  ABC’s, and CNN’s unquestioning megaphone effect to the rest of the media....

Codevilla goes on to re-cap the continuing Revolution of the Elites through Mueller.   He summarizes:

...The revolutionary import of the ruling class’ abandonment of moral and legal restraint in its effort to reverse election results cannot be exaggerated. Sensing themselves entitled to power, imagining themselves identical with legitimacy, “those general laws to which all alike can look for salvation in adversity“—here the US Constitution and ordinary civility—are small stuff to them....

Then came Kavanaugh, and Codevilla narrates that event, too.

...The anti-Kavanaugh campaign is but the latest of the ruling class’s nationwide incitements to intimidation, inconvenience, and even violence against persons who stand in its way. Violent “protests” against candidate Trump’s appearance in several cities nearly forced their cancellation and led the media to blame ….Trump. Conservative speakers on campuses routinely expect “protests” in which people get hurt. “Protesters” at public figures’ homes mean to show that “the people” will not allow “enemies of the people” to live normal lives. House majority whip Steve Scalise and his baseball team were fired upon by someone energized to do just that. This sort of thing—“demonstrators” attacking the rulers’ opponents—is standard in places like Venezuela, Nicaragua, and Iran....

Here's a little passage of which the Repubican Party Poobahs should take careful note:

...The voters who, over four election cycles, stripped the Democratic Party of the U.S. Presidency, left it in the minority in both Houses of Congress, without Governors in two-thirds of the States, and in the minority in two-thirds of the state legislatures did so not out of love for the Republican Party. They were being insulted and made to feel strangers in their own country, and wanted that to stop....

Republicans who take their voters for granted (as did Scott Walker most recently) are not long for this world; and Republicans who eat from the hands of the Elite/Chamber of Commerce/Bankers are also going to be on the chopping block.  Let us hope that is not a literal reference, eh?

Codevilla makes it clear that Trump, while necessary, is not sufficient.  In fact, he has been cowed by "Wise Men" who he should have discarded like used toilet paper.

...Trump’s rousing speeches feed the body politic as empty calories feed the human body. Bluster followed by surrender has political legs both short and shaky. Trump’s tone has lifted his constituencies’ expectations. But tone does not give substance to public opinion, poses but a flimsy barrier to the ruling class’s concerted power, and does not begin to satisfy constituencies threatened by the ruling class machine that came of age in the anti-Kavanaugh campaign....

As we mentioned above, the essay was written before the 2018 elections.  Here Codevilla moves into "prediction" mode:

...Were the Democrats to regain a majority in the House of Representatives in 2018, there is no doubt that they would redouble the “resistance,” and that a substantial portion of the Senate’s Republican majority would be friendly to it. That would leave the 2016 electorate’s defense to Trump—who would be forced to fully deploy Presidential powers in that task or to abdicate it to whomever would campaign credibly to fully exercise those powers after the 2020 election. Such leadership having become necessary—by Trump or whomever—it would carry with it the conservative side of both Houses into sociopolitical stasis for the next two years. Whether Trump were the candidate or not, the 2020 elections would bid for a historic national clarification, and make the 2016 ones appear to have been for low stakes....

I mentioned that Codevilla is not an optimist, didn't I?

...Trump had reacted to the post 2016 “resistance”—mainly by Tweets. Were the Left returned to power after 2020, it would not tweet about resistance—it would crush it, officially and by inciting unofficial violence. How would the crush-ees react? At what points would clashes occur? With how much violence? Sooner or later, somebody is going to get killed. Then what?...

What, indeed??