[Adapted from the latest Radio Derb, now available exclusively on VDARE.com]
I seem to have been seeing recently, in my daily sifting of news and opinion outlets, more than the average quantity of reports of Americans’ negative feelings about the state of our Union. State-of-the-Union-wise, if not totally disgruntled, we are far from being gruntled.
A couple of random such reports.
Most U.S. adults say the country is heading in the wrong direction, according to a recent survey from the Associated Press-NORC Research Center.
The poll, released Saturday, found 78 percent of respondents saying the country is headed in the wrong direction. Only 21 percent said it is headed in the right direction.
Most US adults say country is heading in wrong direction: poll, by Tara Suter, The Hill, October 14, 2023
A large portion of Americans on both sides of the aisle favor getting rid of democracy and imposing violence on their political opponents, among other authoritarian measures, according to a new poll.
Thirty-one percent of Donald Trump supporters and 24 percent of President Joe Biden supporters said democracy is ”no longer viable” and an alternative system should be tried, according to an October poll from the University of Virginia’s Center for Politics.
Large portion of Americans doubt democracy and view violence as acceptable, poll finds, by Brendan Rascius, Miami Herald, October 18, 2023
Hm, well: be careful what you wish for, guys. As Chairman Mao told us: ”革命不是請客吃飯”—”A revolution is not a dinner party.”
So be careful. And just to be double careful, make sure you have lawfully purchased firearms on your property and know how to use them.
Heaven forbid things should go that far, of course.
Those poll respondents are not mistaken, though: there has been a serious falling-off quite recently.
The first thing you learn about the USA federal government, when you’re prepping for your citizenship interview, is that—like Gaul in Julius Caesar’s introduction—it has three separate-but-equal parts. There is the Legislature, in which the people’s elected representatives make our laws and declare war when necessary; the Executive, which administers and enforces those laws and manages our relations with other countries; and the Judiciary, which interprets laws in light of the Constitution when disputes arise.
Today, closing out the first quarter of the 21st century, all three of those branches are collapsing.
Right now, the House still doesn’t have a Speaker and the federal government still doesn’t have a budget—not even a budget of the spurious kind we’ve all gotten used to long since: billion-dollar items packed into thousand-page proposals that most congresscritters haven’t actually read.
Plainly there needs to be a major overhaul of congressional procedures. Of course there will always be disagreements about federal spending. That’s why we have a legislature, though: to thrash out those disagreements by debate and compromise, in the national interest.
Is that really not a thing we can do any longer?
But I particularly want to focus on the Executive Branch: The current Executive Branch (J. Biden, Proprietor) laughs at federal laws.
There is a whole mass of federal laws prescribing which foreigners may enter the USA and which may settle here, on what terms.
Those laws are not being enforced, except against perceived enemies of the administrative state—white Christian home-schoolers, for example.
In what is perhaps the most monstrous, shameful delinquency in the history of our Republic, the Executive has twisted and perverted the wording of those laws on issues like “parole” and “asylum” to, in effect, annul immigration law altogether.
The proper constitutional remedy for this Executive delinquency is impeachment: of the relevant executive officers, beginning with Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas.
There have been efforts in that direction, with Representative Andy Biggs of Arizona taking the lead in filing articles of impeachment.
When matters came to a head in July, however, it was clear that most Republican congressweasels, while willing to make disapproving remarks, would cuck on actual impeachment for fear of alienating the media—and, of course, their donors.
There is of course an intersection there with the federal judiciary. A key post in the executive is Attorney General, chief law-enforcement officer of the federal government, present incumbent the sinister apparatchik Merrick Kirillovich Garland.
Spot quiz: Does the acronym AGAAVE mean anything, reader? No? It didn’t mean anything to me, either, until I read this terrifying report in the October 4th Newsweek, headline: ”Donald Trump Followers Targeted by FBI as 2024 Election Nears.”
You should read that article, but here are sample quotes, edited, referring to a joint report to Congress given by the FBI and the DHS back in June:
The threats listed in that paragraph [of the joint FBI-DHS report] are all clearly associated with America’s right and in particular with Trump’s MAGA supporters. Right after January 6, the FBI co-authored a restricted report (”Domestic Violent Extremists Emboldened in Aftermath of Capitol Breach, Elevated Domestic Terrorism Threat of Violence Likely Amid Political Transitions and Beyond”) in which it shifted the definition of AGAAVE (”anti-government, anti-authority violent extremism”) from ”furtherance of ideological agendas” to ”furtherance of political and/or social agendas.” For the first time, such groups could be so labeled because of their politics.
It was a subtle change, little noticed, but a gigantic departure for the Bureau. Trump and his army of supporters were acknowledged as a distinct category of domestic violent extremists, even as the FBI was saying publicly that political views were never part of its criteria to investigate or prevent domestic terrorism. Where the FBI sees threats is also plain from the way it categorizes them—a system which on the surface is designed to appear nonpartisan. This shifted subtly days after the events of January 6 when it comes to what the Bureau calls AGAAVE.
And yes, the A-G is in there. I mean ”A-G” for ”Attorney General,” not the ”A-G” of ”A-G-A-A-V-E,” although there’s not much daylight between the two. Another quote from Newsweek:
For Attorney General Merrick Garland: ”Attacks by domestic terrorists are attacks on all of us collectively, aimed at rending the fabric of our democratic society and driving us apart.”
So what happens when a Dissident dragged off to jail after having his door kicked down by Merrick Garland’s goons is brought to trial in front of a federal judge a year or two later? You don’t need to ask; or if you do need to, ask one of the January 6th demonstrators.
And when federal judges aren’t helping Comrade Garland to put away political Dissidents on double-digit sentences, they are busy conducting double-jeopardy trials of defendants like Derek Chauvin in the George Floyd case, or the Brunswick Three in that of Ahmaud Arbery.
Those double-jeopardy trials are of course the evil fruit of our poisonous and surely unconstitutional Civil Rights laws, otherwise known as the Federal Anti-White Charter.
That’s how I think of Civil Rights laws, anyway. I shall continue to do so until the day I see nationwide publicity over the trial of a black American for violating the Civil Rights of a white American.
A footnote: Just yesterday came the news that Derek Chauvin’s legal team has filed a petition asking the U.S. Supreme Court to hear his case [Derek Chauvin’s attorneys file petition asking U.S. Supreme Court to review case, by Liz Collin, Alpha News, October 19, 2023]. The official U.S. Supreme Court filing comes after the Supreme Court declined to hear the case in July: the case, that is, that Minnesota courts violated Chauvin’s Sixth Amendment right to a fair trial.
It’s not very likely, just on a statistical basis, that the Supremes will hear the case; they get far more petitions than they can handle. But there are very serious questions about Chauvin’s trials, state and federal, though; Dissident journalist Andy Ngo has tweeted some of them.
Court documents in the prosecution of Derek Chauvin show the public's extreme pressure on prosecutors over George Floyd's death, even when evidence didn't show damage to his neck. Far-left extremists promised bloodshed and terror attacks if Chauvin wasn't convicted.… pic.twitter.com/B0PD6nMhzy
— Andy Ngô 🏳️🌈 (@MrAndyNgo) October 18, 2023
It would be great to see them aired in a setting where there are no jurors to fear for their lives.
John Derbyshire [email him] writes an incredible amount on all sorts of subjects for all kinds of outlets. (This no longer includes National Review, whose editors had some kind of tantrum and fired him.) He is the author of We Are Doomed: Reclaiming Conservative Pessimism and several other books. He has had two books published by VDARE.com com: FROM THE DISSIDENT RIGHT (also available in Kindle) and FROM THE DISSIDENT RIGHT II: ESSAYS 2013.
For years he’s been podcasting at Radio Derb, now available at VDARE.com for no charge. His writings are archived at JohnDerbyshire.com.
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