I was out of town yesterday at a family event. I got to talk to some folks I haven’t spoken to in years. And it was immediately clear that everyone was galvanized by the Roe v. Wade decision. It was all they could talk about. Even people who still didn’t know what is going on in the country, people submerged in the New York city progressive bubble were animated and excited and thinking about further changes that the Supreme Court could enact.
And this was in the belly of the beast. There were progressives everywhere I looked. But people were talking openly about which progressive law could be flipped next. Gay marriage, affirmative action, freedom of association and religious freedom were all being excitedly discussed while radical progressives were in earshot. There was an energy and an attitude. It was as if the Supreme Court had given us permission to speak the unspeakable. I’m guessing this is what it was like when the Soviet Union crumbled. No one had to be careful what they said about the government. They no longer had to pretend to love Big Brother. You could finally state out loud that 2 + 2 = 4.
And so that is the revolution. It turns out that we could have been winning all along. All of these Republican judges and congressman and senators (and presidents!) were working against us all along. All it required was for us to elect someone who was actually on our side. All it required was for someone to actually want to win these things for us. All it required was someone to finally do something. And now even the sleepers are aware that something has been unleashed in the world that has been chained up for half a century. The normal people have suddenly experienced what representative government is supposed to be like.
Probably you’ve often heard of the progressive program as a one-way ratchet. The powers-that-be have used a slow but steady escalation of progressive changes that always moves in one direction. Worse and worse and worse. Like a band around our chests constricting our breathing. But now it’s as if someone has released the pawl and the gear has spun loose. All the tension is removed and we can breathe! And once you can breathe you can also think clearly. And you wonder how the hell did we end up this way?
If we’re not idiots we should be thinking about how to prevent this from happening again. We should be looking at who stood by and watched all this going on and either was too stupid to fix it or was part of the plot to make it happen. In either case these are the people we need to blame. These are the people we must fire. Now admittedly, some of these sleepers who are finally becoming aware truly are too stupid to help themselves. I already was hearing them mention admiringly Nikki Haley and Kristi Noem as conservative women who could lead us to victory. At that point I walked away and looked for someone with at least half a brain. And that confirmed that indeed the “conservatives” are their own worst enemies because a very large contingent just don’t have a clue. But that’s fine. The 80/20 rule says that eighty percent of the work is done by twenty percent of the group so all we have to do is find the two out of ten people with the sense to come in out of the rain and let them run the show.
So yesterday was very encouraging. A month or two ago I asked “Is Something Real Starting to Happen?” I think yesterday I saw a very large affirmation that it is. I’m reminded of what Churchill said. This isn’t the end or even the beginning of the end. But it feels like the end of the beginning. Things are starting to roll.