Discerning Whitewater

My hope is that this is the best note you read all week.

I came across an article by Lee Smith entitled Assabiya Wins Every time several times over multiple mediums last week. Let’s call this my “book report” of his slightly lengthy piece, with my opinion (for free) 🙂 . I condensed it as much as I can…. really great read.

Assabiya, in my words, is the cycle of a society becoming powerful and ultimately weak and falling. The first half of the essay gets into history… but I am more concerned with the comparison to American society today.

For our elite, the fall began during the tail end of the Bill Clinton presidency when Democratic Party strategists augured that they’d soon have a permanent hold on power thanks to urban intellectuals, young single women, racial and ethnic majorities, and the LGBT community. What is described as a coalition is in fact a mélange of clients with varying and sometimes opposing interests that can only be held together by stoking a communal hatred of the national majority—the white middle class.

It was hardly a coincidence that this demographic was the source of the wealth that the establishment was busy transferring to themselves and abroad, through initiatives like the North American Free Trade Agreement. The elites rationalized their impoverishment of the white middle class by claiming that they were dying anyway. And when the American heartland didn’t die off quickly enough, the establishment credentialed themselves as progressives by calling the people who live there racists. Being racists, they deserved all the bad things the elite had decided for them. Thus, by betting on sectarianism as the path to permanent power, American elites polarized the United States.

I lived through this and saw this shift. I never dreamed how quickly the left, owning everything in America – the news, Hollywood, the education system – would attempt to be the dominant party by …. by …. by going after man’s sinful nature. The attacks over the last twenty five years have been (but not limited to) free thought (urban intellectuals), fetuses (young single women), a complete and total lack of grace with regard to identity (racial and ethnic majorities), and Biblical identity.

We have seen this here in Whitewater, with the urban elites. I remember walking into a shrinking, progressive church here in Whitewater as the pastor made the cynical and lukewarm claim “All are Welcome”, pridefully implying that only this enlightened church truly welcomes all.

¹⁴ “To the angel of the church in Laodicea write:

These are the words of the Amen, the faithful and true witness, the ruler of God’s creation. ¹⁵ I know your deeds, that you are neither cold nor hot. I wish you were either one or the other! ¹⁶ So, because you are lukewarm—neither hot nor cold—I am about to spit you out of my mouth. ¹⁷ You say, ‘I am rich; I have acquired wealth and do not need a thing.’ But you do not realize that you are wretched, pitiful, poor, blind and naked. ¹⁸ I counsel you to buy from me gold refined in the fire, so you can become rich; and white clothes to wear, so you can cover your shameful nakedness; and salve to put on your eyes, so you can see.

¹⁹ Those whom I love I rebuke and discipline. So be earnest and repent. ²⁰ Here I am! I stand at the door and knock. If anyone hears my voice and opens the door, I will come in and eat with that person, and they with me.

²¹ To the one who is victorious, I will give the right to sit with me on my throne, just as I was victorious and sat down with my Father on his throne. ²² Whoever has ears, let them hear what the Spirit says to the churches.”

Revelation Chapter 3 – If you have never read Revelation, you need to do so.

It must be hard for someone under the age of thirty to imagine an America (as a whole) at peace with identity. As a Christian, I understand that my peace is directly tied to my relationship with Christ.

Owning all the institutions is a sign of great power and demoralizes opponents. So it was hardly surprising that much of the Republican establishment attached itself to the rising elite and reshaped its policies to fit.

The elites upended the common wisdom of American politics, which held that the trick to winning elections is to capture the large center of the country and ignore the extremes on both sides. But because the new creed held that polarization was the key to holding permanent power, the policies became ever more eccentric.

More eccentric, like maybe:

• The constant perpetuation of victimhood
• The embracing of abortion
• More and more free money
• The Dems trying to take control of federal elections
• Federalizing the police (the eventual goal of #DefundThePolice)

These have all been tried … Venezuela, the Soviet Union, Eastern Europe…

Accordingly, Barack Obama’s rhetoric became increasingly brittle in his second term. If you’re not for trans bathrooms, you’re a transphobe. Question the wisdom of legitimizing a terror state’s nuclear weapons program and you’re a warmonger. “That’s not who we are,” he said to deflect any hint of criticism. Depending on the policy in question, this meant that according to the ruling establishment, anywhere from 50% to 90% of the electorate wasn’t really American.

Seen from this perspective, it becomes clear that the Biden administration’s new national security priorities have been a long time in the making. The absurd claim that the country’s chief threats are “domestic terrorism” and “white nationalism” or anyone who opposes COVID lockdowns or questions the integrity of the 2020 election is the culmination of a project the Democrats embarked on 25 years ago: The white middle class is the enemy. And they are much larger than the nearly 75 million Americans who didn’t vote for Joe Biden—they include anyone who fears having their businesses closed again or doesn’t want to be forced to take a vaccine. And as we have seen, many of them are neither white nor middle class.

Of course institutions like the press and intelligence bureaucracies would enlist in the project to split the country. The party owns them. And so there is no one left to question the wisdom of breaking with the more than 150-year-old compact that is the political and cultural foundation of America’s post-Civil War peace—racial equality.

Lee Smith makes a great argument. I do not even believe the woke would disagree with these facts here.

“Their prowess disappears as Time feasts on them,” Ibn Khaldun wrote of dying regimes. “They reach their limit, the limit that is set by the nature of human urbanization and political superiority.” Evidence of the establishment’s decay is everywhere you look—the botched withdrawal from Afghanistan, the public health bureaucracy’s failed COVID response, even Obama’s 60th birthday. Who would publicly celebrate leadership of an effort to split a nation on behalf of a sectarian gang that is only kept from each other’s throats by driving them at a much larger force, one made more cohesive and angry by the elite’s incessant attacks? Only a deracinated and delirious regime would parade an assortment of celebrities from the worlds of entertainment and politics to demonstrate its self-arrogated superiority in front of a nation it locked down, bankrupted, and mocked—only an intoxicated elite with no one left to take away the car keys.

The hypocrisy is such a huge part of this discussion. Last week I saw our City Council Chair dining @ Fanatico… no social distancing, chatting with his buddy, no mask…. I asked him about it and he gave me excuses. Two days later, he is at the city council meeting, masked up, projecting fear, claiming how one case could turn into thirty and asking for “emergency powers”. What a broken record!

Generally speaking, there is such a very direct relationship between how far left a person is and how much control and fear these people project.

So the most important part of Smith’s essay:

It’s frightening to see American leadership pulling America apart at the seams. And it’s shocking to see our constitutional order ripped to shreds as the establishment undercuts property rights, imposes capricious public health regulations, mandates experimental medical treatments, and holds political prisoners. 

While the ruling regime falls apart, he wrote, “the group feeling of other people (within the same nation) is strong. Their force cannot be broken. Their emblem is recognized to be victorious. As a result, their hopes of achieving royal authority, from which they had been kept until now by a superior power within their own group, are high. Their superiority is recognized, and, therefore, no one disputes their claim to royal authority. They seize power.”

We are part of history unfolding before us, as it has throughout time. But to be clear, what we are witnessing is not the end of America. It’s just the end of this particular branch of American leadership.

I agree that the left is falling apart. The crackdowns by the left have been absolutely crazy. I saw today a Cook County judge used vaccination status to disallow a mother to see her child. The way the left lied and lied and lied about Trump, the massive evidence of voter fraud and the left’s refusal to even investigate. The massive projection of fear via climate change. Throw in Tony Evers saying there is no evidence that extra unemployment benefits are hurting the economy (meanwhile my weekend trip to Johnson Creek revealed EVERY store needing help.) They have fourteen months until midterms take them out of power in the House and the Senate. And next year will be an election year, so Congress will not get much done. I think we need to look out for a Christmas Eve vote federalizing elections…. it will be the ultimate act of desperation. This fight is far from over, and while I agree that the fall of the left is inevitable at this point, the question is how many Americans have to suffer as a result…

Personally, I fully believe God is in control. I am not someone that believes we “sit back” as Christians and simply “do nothing”. I believe we are called to act out of love and grace and truth. I also believe 2 Chronicles 7:14:

14 If my people, which are called by my name, shall ^ahumble themselves, and ^bpray, and seek my ^cface, and turn from their wicked ways; then will I hear from heaven, and will forgive their sin, and will heal their land.

I believe America’s success is directly tied to it’s Faith.

So…. long article that really articulates our current situation well. I hope you got as much out of it as I did.

-mike