Hanging Together or Hanging Separately

From my primary "I Protest" Substack (August 2022) at donaldjeffries.substack.com

This article is almost three years old, and the second administration of Donald Trump, after some initial optimism, appears to be very loudly treading water now, as was the case during his first presidency. We are still not at our tipping point.

We are at that stage. The tipping point- or rather multiple tipping points- has long been passed. We have arrived at the kind of moment Benjamin Franklin warned his fellow Patriots about as they signed the Declaration of Independence: "We must all hang together, or, most assuredly, we shall all hang separately."

Now, present day Americans, even most conspiracy types, aren’t about to sign a Declaration of Independence 2. Although maybe we should; we’re certainly in the midst of a much more egregious “long train of abuses and usurpations,” than the Founders faced in 1776. Our new Declaration of Independence would be a veritable War and Peace if we attempted to document them all. But it’s not British royalty that’s responsible. Our own leaders, after decades of gradualism, have succeeded in establishing the “absolute tyranny” Thomas Jefferson described.

We are supposed to have the right to “alter or abolish” this government, if it no longer meets our needs. If we don’t consent to being governed by these tyrants, we aren’t required to be, according to that whole “consent of the governed” thing that was the primary impetus behind the move for independence. But that was shattered in 1860, when some southern states attempted to secede, because they no longer consented. Abraham Lincoln, whom every school child reveres as our greatest hero, taught them otherwise, to the tune of nearly a million dead young soldiers.

I hear talk of secession all the time. Sounds good, but it was crushed over 150 years ago, when it was tried the first time. And how would that work, anyhow? There are red and black pilled people in every state. And the opposite is true, as well; how would you expel the blues from Wyoming or Idaho? I think most of us would be happy to move to any state where there were no crazed social justice warriors around, to lecture us and report us to the corrupt authorities. But that would never happen, because the Karens need us in order to survive. Think Popeye without his spinach.

Exactly what would a 100 percent blue state look like? Who would you “cancel?” You might go a whole week without references to “racism.” After all, everyone there would agree with you. Blues are all about consensus. That is the essential problem we confront. Even milquetoast mainstream conservatives have some tolerance for the views of others. The crazed “Woke” forces don’t. So we have to be there, as receptacles for their unceasing anger and hatred. They really can’t virtue signal to each other.

So we must strive to live together, it seems. But how do we do that? Many, if not most, Americans don’t believe that those they dislike have any rights. Witness the January 6 Soviet-style show hearings. Witness the January 6 defendants, virtually none of them having committed any acts of violence, locked behind bars for a year and a half, denied all due process. I’ve argued with enough people to know that this is not a big concern to our fellow citizens. In fact, they fully support it. They are impressed with the show hearings, which destroy any chance at fair trials. They love Liz Cheney.

How do we coexist with people who don’t believe in free speech? Who think the Constitution was written by dead, White racists, and should be discarded? Who don’t believe in God, and thus have no appreciation of God-given rights? Who have no regard for the sanctity of human life? Who accept the ridiculous, State-driven fantasy that our anti-White society is ruled by “White Supremacists?” Who think there are “too many people,” but turn murderous at the suggestion that we stop letting illegal immigrants freely cross the border?

Who think that men can give birth to children? Who think there are fifty seven genders? Who believe “climate change,” which they couldn’t possibly define, is an overriding issue? They are perfectly fine with consigning their children to lower standards of living, if it will somehow “save the planet.” They are willing to give up all the modern advances hard working geniuses of the past gave us. In effect, they would like to make us all Amish, without all the morality and decency.

I believe at this point we have irreconcilable differences with our blue brethren, as so many intrepid divorce lawyers have put it. We cannot live with them, but they won’t live without us. They need to nag us, cancel us, and imprison us. We offend them. We have to respect for their feelings- that’s what identity politics is all about. But they would be miserable without us. Actually, maybe if they lived exclusively with each other, the disturbing, controlling behavior might wake some of them up.

Let’s compare the grievances the American colonies had with George’s England, with the grievances today’s Americans have with their own “representatives.” The Founders were upset over the Stamp Act, and held a memorable party over the tax on tea. They protested “taxation without representation.” Where do we begin with our present grievances? Start with the multitude of unconstitutional government agencies, like the IRS, the FBI, the CIA, the NSA, the DIA, Homeland Security, the Department of Energy, the Department of Education, just to name some of them.

How about our fractional banking system? The Federal Reserve is a private, unaudited corporation despite its name, and every loan the banks under this system produce is absolutely counterfeit by any definition. How about the fact our crumbling infrastructure hasn’t been addressed in over sixty years, and is now positively Third World level? How about school systems that enable bullying, teach little of any practical value, and now employ crazed Tik Tok activists who push poisonous agendas like transgender story time and critical race theory?

Or our electoral process, which has been rife with fraud for decades. If your vote ever counted, it certainly doesn’t count, now. Not that there is ever anybody to vote for, even if the process wasn’t rigged. We have the Worst and the Dimmest, to flip the old Kennedy administration label on its ear. Corruption, incompetence, nepotism, abuse of power- it’s all there. And never punished. The Worst and the Dimmest, like athletes and entertainers, are utterly above the law. Our southern borders remain wide open, and our own government encourages and assists the invasion.

Speaking of the law, we have constructed a prison system that incarcerates more people than any country ever has. But still lets the likes of Hillary Clinton and Hunter Biden roam free. The judges are all completely politicized, so that if your politics can be determined by the lordly character presiding over your fate, and it opposes his or hers, then you might as well sit silently and wait for the guilty verdict. Which will come from a jury of your “peers,” who will be devoid of all critical thinking skills or common sense. Good luck!

More recently, we have been victimized by an onerous set of “mandates,” passed by no legislative body elected by the people. We’ve been forced to wear worthless and potentially harmful masks, to practice pointless “social distancing,” and denied access to church and most social activities. Small businesses were forced to shut down, while national chains selling the same products were allowed to flourish. Obviously dangerous vaccines were forced on people, at the point of losing their jobs. Government funds doled out to hospitals resorted in deadly COVID “protocols,” which have killed untold numbers of people, including my brother.

I’ve only scratched the surface here. If the people were actually in charge, as our criminal leaders insist, then all this would have remedied long ago. No modern day John Hancock would need to boldly write his name down on such a revolutionary document. We were far beyond any transgressions committed by the British during the colonial period, by at least 1860. Lincoln alone did more to trample on our rights than King George III ever thought of doing.

So who would be our George Washington? Our Thomas Jefferson? Donald Trump? Ron DeSantis? Rand Paul? Marjorie Taylor Greene? I don’t think anyone objecting to the present tyranny in the slightest is made of quite the same mettle. Sure, we have the Second Amendment, at least for now. But they have the Military Industrial Complex. And no high ranking officer is going to be on your side. We couldn’t hope to do a Minuteman thing, and upset these Redcoats. So violence is out. We’ve allowed those we need to overthrow to construct an unbeatable defense system.

As Alex Jones has said, there is a war on for your mind. This war has to be won with ideas, not guns. But our enemies are prepping for this as well. The United Nations recently declared war on “conspiracy theorists.” The World Economic Forum has established a huge force of what it calls “information warriors,” to counter “disinformation.” You know, like any mention of their criminal corruption. Our guns won’t help us in an information war.

What makes this war even more difficult is the fact that even those of us who are awake to the corruption and the tyranny, are often at odds with each other. The JFK assassination researchers, the 9/11 “Truthers,” many conspiracy-friendly podcasters and bloggers, are all critical of some in their midst. I’ve been criticized for not being extreme enough, as well as being an extremist “wacko.” It appears that you can’t please all of the conspiracy people all of the time.

I’ll plead again to those of you faithfully reading this. Listen to the independent podcasters. If you have something to advertise, become a sponsor of their shows. Most of us have PayPal accounts, Cash App, etc. I very much appreciate the contributions I’ve received. It does help us, both financially and emotionally. As I tell everyone who contacts me, to let me how much my work meant to them, it’s messages like that which keep me going on. If we didn’t hear from people, if there was no obvious reaction to what we’re doing, then most of us would simply stop doing it.

Read our books and articles. Recommend them to others. Mention the podcasts and internet radio shows you like. Review or rate our work wherever you can. Some kind fans of mine continually recommend me to Tucker Carlson and other big shows that might perhaps give me a platform. Suggesting my book to your library system is a good, proactive move. These things may not seem like much, but they add up, like the tiny ripples of hope RFK talked about, which I reference so often.

We might not have much time left to come together. The tyrannical authoritarians in charge are looking to crack down even more. They’re testing out the frightening Chinese-style social credit system in Italy. Don’t think they won’t do it here. And it’s likely to come with a digitalized currency system. If that happens, science fiction will become reality. Your finances will be tied to your social credit score. Just by writing this, for instance, I’d be denied access to my own money under this system.

Considering all that we’ve allowed to happen in just the past few years, I don’t have much confidence that we’ll be able to resist digitalized currency or a social credit score. Obviously, the same majority which still clings to their masks and mindlessly gets the next vaccine or booster, would be in support of this final Orwellian twist. After all, social media posts that are hateful towards Christians, or Trump, or alternative media in general, are not going to lower your social credit score any more than such posts are censored by the ubiquitous Fact Checkers.

Already, PayPal and even some banks have cancelled the accounts of even pretty mainstream conservatives. It certainly ought to be illegal for a business to deny access to someone based on their politics, but then again the Woke authoritarians have cheered the harassment of those such as Sarah Huckabee Sanders and Ted Cruz at restaurants, and even their ejection from the premises. Something about sit-ins at lunch counters comes to mind at this point, but these people never sense the irony.

So, a Chinese-style social credit score, tied to a digitalized currency, perhaps with a simultaneous outlawing of cash, would take things to a new level, but it really is just a continuation of present policies. We’re about as far as can be imagined from midnight rides and Sons of Liberty meetings. Not to mention Boston Tea Parties. Look what happened to the Tea Party the Republicans tried to form a few decades back. And they were only scratching the surface, touching on a minute amount of Stupid Party-friendly topics.

We can imagine our community- loosely brought together by podcasts and blogs like this- to be a digital version of those colonial patriots. Sure, there are no One Percenters among us, while the Founders were the One Percenters of their day. But while our clueless, sleeping friends and families have shown they have no tipping point, we reached ours a long time ago. We are beyond fed up, even if they refuse to be. We have the most invaluable resource of all on our side; the truth.

Let us try and come together. To commiserate with each other over the family dysfunction and shunning from polite society we are all experiencing to some degree. “When governments fear the people, there is liberty. When the people fear the government, there is tyranny,” Thomas Jefferson wisely observed. There is no question right now just who fears who. We have political prisoners. People are being prosecuted for their words and beliefs. We have thought criminals.

“If there was hope, it must lie in the proles,” George Orwell wrote. “The Party could not be overthrown from within. Its enemies, if it had any enemies, had no way of coming together…But the proles, if only they could somehow become conscious of their own strength, would have no need to conspire. They would need only to rise up and shake themselves like a horse shaking off flies. If they chose they could blow up the Party to pieces tomorrow morning. Surely sooner or later it must occur to them to do it.”

Can our figurative horse shake off these annoying, oligarchic flies? Will it ever occur to us to do it? It’s like one schoolyard bully is terrorizing all the children because everyone won’t simply use their numbers to stop him from doing it. The lethargy of the mob has been at least as destructive historically as the actions springing from mob mentality. We need to act to stop this from going even further. In the meantime, I’ll keep writing and talking, on the platforms that will have me, from my dark little corner of the internet.