Revolution 2020
This insightful essay by Angelo Codevilla explains that the revolution occurring in America - our very own Color Revolution - is a result of conflict between the American people and the ruling oligarchy - that is, the elites. A few excerpts are included below, but the entire essay presents a number of important concepts and is worthwhile reading.
Understanding what drives the revolution that is destroying the American republic gives insight into how the 2020 election’s results may impact its course. Its practical question—who rules?—is historically familiar. But any revolution’s quarrels and stakes obscure the question: to what end? Our revolution is by the ruling class—a revolution from above. Crushing obstacles to its growing oligarchic rule is the proximate purpose.
But the logic that drives the revolution aims at civilization itself....
Aristotle, in Book 5 of the Politics, describes how revolutions kill regimes (such as America’s) that balance the contrasting interests of ordinary people with those of the wealthy, of officials, and of other prominent persons....
But, if the party that takes power thereby destroys the friendship that had bound the several parts, even trifling incidents can spiral into all-consuming violence... Today, the oligarchic transformation of America’s republic is turning violent. Aristotle, however, points out that oligarchies born of violent revolution tend to succumb to the very violence that births them, quickly degenerating into some kind of tyranny or one-man rule...
The U.S. Constitution had codified as fine a balance between the powers of the Many, the Few, and the One as Aristotle may have imagined by arming the federal government’s components, the States, and ordinary citizens (via the first ten Amendments as well as elections) with means to maintain the balance...
The oligarchy is no more concerned about race than it is about education, or environmentalism, or sex, or anything else. It is about yet more discretionary power in the hands of its members...
Breaking down their client’s resistance to the revolution of the ruling class requires inducing them to share in the revolution’s logic of hate for its targets. This in turn requires control over channels of communication. Google, Facebook, and Twitter are indispensable for this...
Let there be no doubt: the ruling class’s focus on Donald Trump has been incidental... They fear the millions of Americans whom they loathe, who voted for Trump, who gave his party control of House and Senate, and who will surely vote for folks these potentates really should fear...
America’s oligarchic transformation had proceeded smoothly for decades because the ruling class had taken care not to add insult to injury....
In fact, the [2016] election’s outcome had resulted from the general population’s resistance to the ruling class further solidifying its oligarchy...
The ruling class use of COVID-19 is medical nonsense. But the “lockdowns” made perfect political sense because they disadvantaged primarily the sort of people who vote conservative. The lockdowns also made ordinary people more economically dependent on government...
The ubiquity, depth, and vehemence of the ruling class’s denigration of Donald Trump is such as to render superfluous any detailing thereof...
The revolution long since destroyed the original American republic in the minds, hearts, and habits of a critical mass of citizens...
If we want to live in peace, as we should, we must contrive to agree to disagree to accommodate peace.
The greatest benefit that would come from the Left’s defeat in the 2020 election is the possibility that it may become possible to convince the ruling class, if not the intersectionals, that such accommodation is the best deal they can get.