America's Hinge of Fate

The Coming Elections and the future of the Republic

Photo by Laura Vinck on Unsplash

In republics, great questions are often decided by the outcome of elections.  The United States is no exception.  Several examples come to mind.  The outcome of the election of 1800 determined that the American republic was capable of transferring power peacefully from one party to another.  It avoided a civil war that would have destroyed the American experiment in self-government in its infancy.  The reaction throughout the South to the outcome of the election of Abraham Lincoln in 1860 precipitated the onset of the Civil War.  The election of 1864 established that the people of the North would persist in their determination to prevent disunion and ultimately to abolish slavery in the land of the free.  The election of 1932 confirmed the establishment of the vast federal regulatory and welfare bureaucracy that we live with today.  It was the beginning of Leviathan in America.  The elections of 1948 and 1952 confirmed the bipartisan nature of the national security state the nation had decided was necessary to wage the Cold War.

As I write these remarks, it is almost exactly eight months until the United States conducts what most every observer agrees, will be another of the most important elections in the history of the United Sates.  It is almost eleven months until the equally crucial transfer of power from the current president, to a new one.  It is no exaggeration to say that the fate of liberty at home and abroad hinges upon the outcome of the events which transpire between now and those two dates.  The coming election will determine for generations to come, whether the republic will continue its current descent into social madness and police state autocracy, or reverse course and save liberty.  Should liberty fail at home, it will most assuredly fail abroad. The next year is, to borrow a phrase from  Winston Churchill, America’s “hinge of fate.”

It is a commonplace that anything can happen in politics in the course of a day, a week, a year.  This is especially true of the coming months.  Almost exactly five years ago, a “black swan” event swept out of China and changed the world.  Absent the Covid catastrophe Donald Trump would almost certainly have been reelected and both America and the world would be in a much better place than they are now.

Roughly seven million persons have died worldwide as a result, and approximately 1.2 million Americans died a premature death almost certainly caused by a dangerous biological research program—underwritten at least in part by American dollars authorized by Antony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases.  Throughout the nation, local and state level public health bureaucrats wantonly violated fundamental rights guaranteed to Americans by the Bill of Rights.  Amazingly, a substantial majority of Americans supinely complied with edicts issued by local tyrants in the greatest assault on American liberty since the adoption of the Alien and Sedition Acts in 1798.  So, indeed, anything can happen.

Meanwhile, abetted by the enormous power of national media and social networks,  the Covid catastrophe was exploited by forces within the national security and intelligence bureaucracy, who had engaged in a concerted effort to cripple a legitimately elected president and overturn the results of the 2016 presidential election.  It was a conspiracy, both spoken and unspoken at the highest levels.  But none dared call it treason.

Among the consequences were the installation of a cognitively impaired president, little better than a marionette flitting about the stage as directed by leftist radicals determined to “fundamentally transform” America.  The policies they have imposed upon the American people have brought the nation to the brink of disaster.

At home, they have turned the once vaunted FBI from an agency designed to investigate crime, into a domestic intelligence agency keeping a watchful eye on the both the private political conduct , and the religious activities of ordinary Americans.  They have used its power to censor and circumscribe what Americans can and cannot say online and in public forums in a manner that reminds one of George Orwell’s famous novel,1984.

Their campaign against the police and public order has resulted in skyrocketing crime in major cities across the nation.  Their campaign against human nature has led them to enforce absurdities such as the notion that men can have babies and that children should be able to change their sex, as though barbaric surgeries can erase the difference between people born with XY chromosomes and those born with XX chromosomes.

Their energy policies, aligned with those of allied trans-national elites in the EU and elsewhere around the world have stimulated rising inflation and hunger abroad, as well as farmer rebellions throughout Europe. They have made war upon the fossil fuels industry and tried to compel ordinary people to make dramatic changes in their lives without so much as a vote of Congress. 

They have adopted policies of racial discrimination against disfavored elements of our population in such a way as to set American against American in blatant violation of the Fourteenth Amendment which guarantees to all, “the equal protection of the laws.”

They have engaged in a campaign of “lawfare” against legitimate political opposition, including against a former president of the United States, that dwarfs the evil of McCarthyism of three-quarters of a century ago.

They have incarcerated upwards of a thousand political prisoners in a dungeon in the district of Columbia, many still awaiting trial after several years.

As part of a vast voter importation scheme, they have brought into the United States, apparently in collaboration with drug cartels, some ten million largely illiterate and impoverished men, women, and children—many subjected to unspeakable crimes, in brazen violation of our immigration laws.  For all intents and purposes, they have abolished the nation’s southern border. 

Recently there has been a good deal of concern, even on the part of FBI Director Wray, that some of those who have entered the country illegally are potential terrorists.  If only 1% of those ten million are terrorists that means that the administration has allowed 100,000 terrorists into the country.  Even if only 0.1% of those ten million are terrorists, that is still 10,000 potential terrorists moving freely throughout the nation.

Abroad, their policies in Afghanistan, Ukraine, and the Far East, have brought the American people to the brink of senseless, no-win wars that might even escalate to the level of nuclear conflict.

That’s the bad news.

The good news is that social media, especially Elon Musk’s X, along with Fox News, Newsmax, Substack, Rumble and others have finally cracked the leftist monopoly of news coverage in the United States.

The result is that scores of millions of Americans are, in the vernacular of the 1850s, “wide-awake” to the peril we are in.

They recognize that the law enforcement and intelligence agencies of the Federal government have been turned against the political opponents of the Democratic Party.

They recognize that Donald Trump is the victim of a dangerous lawfare campaign that could be turned against any who oppose the party in power.

At long last they understand that massive levels of illegal immigration have turned every state into a border state and every city into a border city.

They are beginning to understand that sanctuary cities which defy federal immigration law enforcement are not only dangerous to the people who live in those cities, but to the very concept of law and order.

They realize that  their previously safe, comfortable, middle-class lives are jeopardized by the president’s policy of unrestricted immigration in violation of the laws.  Schools, hospitals, and other services that we have taken for granted, are going bankrupt under the financial stress.

Many are beginning to understand that the “climate change” scare drummed into us daily is just as phony as the Russia hoax.  They realize that the resultant policy of energy scarcity is utterly irrational, especially when energy abundance is available.

Likewise, most are by now fed up with the incessant opportunistic racializing of everyday life.  Perhaps we have at last, reached the point of peak racism in America.  Even substantial numbers of black voters are moving away from the far left.

In short, many are ready for change.  The question is whether enough have seen the light; whether enough voters have awakened to the incompetence, indeed, the lawless malice of the Biden administration.

Are enough people concerned about the administration’s slow drift to war with Russia and possibly even China, as we sellout Israel in favor of Iran because Joe Biden is afraid of the electoral consequences of alienating the large Muslim community in the crucial state of Michigan?

So, what’s going to happen during the next eight to eleven months?  As a historian, I prefer to write about the past rather than predict the future, but a reader recently asked for my views and how the current crisis differs from that of the 1960s. I can’t resist.

On the foreign policy front:

• Barring some sort of last-minute deal, Israel will utterly crush the last remnants of Hamas in Gaza.

• Iran will develop a deliverable nuclear weapons capability putting Israel in severe jeopardy.  Unless Israel wants to live under the threat of nuclear annihilation, it will have to act. Israel may wait for the outcome of the American presidential election in the hope that a President Trump is inaugurated, but surely it cannot wait long.

• During this spring or summer, Ukrainian resistance to the Russian assault will crumble.  The Biden administration will have to decide whether to intervene to save Ukraine, a step which would certainly have dire consequences, or abandon the effort entirely.  Neither choice will be good for Joe Biden.

• Xi Jinping may decide that this period of American disarray, before a newly elected Donald Trump takes office,  is the perfect opportunity to invade Taiwan, forcing the administration to face yet another humiliating dilemma.

• We may even have another pandemic sweep out of China or elsewhere.

• Given that thousands of potential terrorists have most likely crossed into the United States across the southern border, it is not unlikely that another terrorist attack on the scale of 9/11 may take place.  Whether it takes place before or after the election is anybody’s guess.

On the domestic front:

• The economy will muddle along, alternately giving rise to fears of recession or a resumed bout of inflation with interest rates varying accordingly.

• Crime will continue unabated in big blue cities.

• The Republicans will nominate Donald Trump for president for a third and final time.

• It is hard to imagine how the Democrats could stay with Joe Biden, but it is at least a possibility.  Should they decide to switch candidates, it may not be until the convention.

• Since they have no good candidates Democrats may decide to punt this time around and simply blame Joe Biden for their losses, while preparing to engage in an all-out, scorched earth campaign of resistance should Trump become president again.

• Potential replacements for Biden include California’s Gavin Newsome, Michelle Obama, Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer, and lest we forget, there is always Hillary Clinton biding her time.

• Unlike Mrs. Clinton, Michelle Obama doesn’t want anything to do with Washington, so she is probably out. Whitmer is the right sex, but the wrong color for the Democrats, while Newsome is both the wrong sex and the wrong color.  Besides, he would have to defend his record in California.  He might be popular in the Golden State, but his policies will not sell elsewhere but in a handful of big blue states.  Hillary is about as popular with much of the country as a canker sore. That only leaves Kamala Harris.  She is both the right color and the right sex.  Her problem is that she is even less popular than Joe Biden.

• Accordingly, the Democrats will go with Biden and hope they can push him over the line in November.  Then, if by some miracle, he is elected and sworn in as president he will step down and let Harris take over.  She doesn’t have to be competent.  All she must be is pliable.

• Democrats will try to revive the bogus Russia collusion narrative again.  It’s as predictable as the sunrise in the morning.

• Donald Trump may very well be convicted in one or more venue, but he will appeal, and the conviction will eventually be overturned most likely after the election.  Trump will win the election either way.

• Should Trump appear to be elected, we can expect widespread riots in big blue cities.  Indeed, they will be allowed to burn out of control.  They will constitute a genuine insurrection.

• Donald Trump might take the oath of office at Mar-A-Lago.  He will call out the National Guard, and federal troops if necessary to put down the insurrection in blue cities.

• During the election itself we can expect widespread cheating by the left and an extensive campaign of lawfare to modify the electoral system in the favor of Democrats.

• Any House or Senate election that can conceivably be contested, will be, no matter how ridiculous.

So, how does all of this differ from the chaos of the 1960s and early 1970s?

One overriding difference is that at present we do not have some 500,000 soldiers fighting a war in southeast Asia, and hundreds of young Americans are not coming home to their families every week in body bags as they were in 1968.

Another major difference is that back in the late sixties, the radicals and the Marxists were in the streets.  Now they are in power throughout governments across the nation.

Then, the police and the FBI infiltrated leftist radical groups, and the police battled them in the streets.  Now the FBI infiltrates Catholic Churches, and spies on conservatives, while the police are handcuffed by radical mayors, city councils, and judges. National security agencies urge social media companies to censor and suppress opinions they don’t think Americans should hear or express.

Back then, massive urban riots were largely spontaneous.  Now they are organized and condoned by radicals in power to advance their own objectives.  Antifa and BLM, the American version of the Nazi storm troopers of 1930s Germany are the shock troops of the left ready to be unleashed when necessary. 

The situation is immeasurably more dangerous today than before.