Like habits, institutional power is hard to break. Power by its nature is hard to take from the possessor as he will naturally use it to retain it. Institutional power is especially hard to take because not only will institutions defend themselves, their power is granted by the collective acceptance and habits of the people that they serve or govern.
Akin to all living things, the human institution is rooted to its inception. The acorn becomes the oak tree. The baby born to Mongolian parents on the steppes grows up to be a Mongolian even though he may have a smart phone in his pony’s saddle bag.
The US was born a republic, remains one to this day, and is not likely to morph into a communist dictatorship.
Well, after 2020 the above statement will be met with nervous or incredulous guffaws by half of the electorate, but my point stands. Institutional power can run very deep.
But the United States may be thought of as having two inceptions, the first being the 4th of July 1776, and the second being New England’s great victory over Dixie in 1865. To the victor go the spoils, and this includes organising things as it sees fit. New England saw fit to reshape the reborn country in its own image, and this paradigm persists to this day.
In fact I posit that this country is still run by the split personality of Old New England, the one side being religious or idealistic, the other being industrious or representing industry. Politically this split personality can easily be seen in the Democratic and Republican parties today.
In my view the Right is not revolutionary, but throughout my lifetime has just been trying to rein in Power and maintain its perception of our institutions and way of life. But evidently, the powers-that-be (including both parties) view the Right as an existential threat to what it is or what it wants. We saw in 2020 the extent to which institutional power will go to defend itself, including undermining its own legitimacy in the eyes of the Mob.
If this is the case then the question that comes to my mind is, how does the Right bring these institutions to heel?
M.C. Atkins
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Look Away... 