2024: What I Want, Expect, and Wish For – Part 2

Here are more things I want to see but likely won’t in American politics and government in 2024; things I expect to see but would rather not; a bit of wishful thinking, because at least that makes me smile for a minute; a few things Americans can do; and a final thought which may seem jarring in its optimism.

This is the second of two posts. The first focused mostly on presidential candidates. This one takes up other themes, most of which relate to the presidential race somehow. Nearly everything does.

What I Want (continued)

I Want Us Not to Tolerate Violence or Rampant Tyranny in 2024

I’d love to see a mass outbreak of common sense and spirited Americanism when darker forces resume their rampage this year, as they probably will. Here’s what I mean.

If mostly leftist violence breaks out again this summer and goes largely unopposed by some levels of government, because Big Democracy™ thinks it helps their cause, and if it breaks out again after the election (the degree may depend on the outcome), I want the sovereign People of the United States to put it down hard and fast, at whatever level of our government is still willing to do its job.

On an related topic, at Davos this season the uber-rich who feel entitled to control the fate of all humans are talking again about a future pandemic. They call it unknown but seem confident it will be worse than COVID. I don’t know whether the odds are high, medium, or low that this bug will come from China like the last one. But the US government is likely funding its gain-of-function modification, illegally, as we reasonably suspect happened with the last one. In any case, it makes sense to worry a little. Here’s why, on the very small chance that you’ve forgotten.

In early 2020 the US economy was so good for every major demographic, and the world was relatively so peaceful, that it took an outrageously misguided, socially and economically brutal, and mostly ineffective response to a pandemic to give the Democrats a fighting chance at the White House. We the People let Big Government, Big Democracy™, and Big Tech demolish electoral safeguards, our economy (including hundreds of thousands of small businesses), and our basic freedoms.

The early numbers are even bleaker for the Democrats in 2024, so the Bigs may try it again. Whatever “emergency” might concidentally arise this year, pandemic or otherwise, to give pretext and cover for large-scale mischief, I want the People of the United States to stand up and resist en masse in ways we didn’t before — again at whatever level of government is still willing to do its job.

American resistance against organized violence and “emergency” tyranny still needs to be official, if it possibly can be. That’s why I said “at whatever level of government.” For example, if every county sheriff has to deputize every able-bodied citizen who owns a firearm or a crossbow against the mob, so be it.

It’s worth remembering that the people are the government. The Declaration of Independence asserts that governments derive “their just powers from the consent of the governed.” The Preamble to the United States Constitution says it was “We the People” who formed the Union and established our government. As long as the constitutional mechanisms we established to govern ourselves still exist, in function not just in theory, they must be the means by which the people govern. But in any case we are the government, not merely subjects of our government.

There are fundamental human rights, independent of government institutions and formal declarations of rights. One is the right to defend home, family, community, and freedom, especially when government in general refuses to function or turns aggressively tyrannical.

Dark but with Hope

I’m sorry if all that sounds dark, but our last presidential election year was dark, and the power lust that darkened it is undiminished in 2024. However, I see threads of hope. 2020’s darkness may help us avoid some of this year’s potential mayhem.

First, the Bigs may not want to remind us too vividly of 2020’s abuses by doubling down on them in 2024. It’s too soon for us to have forgotten, and they need us to get fully past 2020 before too many of us unite too effectively to ask too many questions.

Second, I don’t think the authoritarians in our governments want to trade their calfskin gloves and limousines for brass knuckles and armored vehicles, which they might have to do to make the same abuses stick again, if enough Americans still behave like Americans.

Even in our power-drunk leftist revolution-of-convenience there must be a few political realists who understand that the American people are not infinitely patient or infinitely gullible. The people can defend themselves politically, economically, and otherwise. New oppression might make us more angry than afraid.

(I don’t particularly want anger either. I want any resistance to be level-headed and carefully calibrated.)

I Want Us to Close the Border to Illegal Immigration

I want states to deploy the National Guard — since the Commander-in-Chief won’t deploy the US military — to enforce their borders against the ongoing mass invasion by illegal immigrants. If there is any humanity left in us at all, we need to end the Biden administration’s barbaric exploitation of incoming children, women, and men and its own citizens for political gain. We need to end our massive enrichment and empowerment of the Mexican drug and human trafficking cartels (and secondarily their Chinese exploiters). The objective is to reduce illegal immigration to near zero.

Instead of the present invasion, I want a large, steady stream of legal immigration that is orderly, sensible, humane, and efficiently administered.

I Want Proper Budget and Legislative Processes

I want Congress to undertake a proper budget process this year and every subsequent year, instead of their reckless habit of voting themselves lots of money for a few weeks or months at a time, in crisis mode, so they can keep doing what they’ve been doing, only more so, with minimal accountability.

I want Congress to stop passing massive legislation practically no one has had time to read, to do things no majority would approve if they were known. It’s worse than just Taxation Without Representation, one of our grievances against King George III. It’s a reprise of a larger grievance, legislation without representation.

I want an end to the sleazy Congressional practice of naming a massive spending bill after a defensible cause — COVID relief, infrastructure, inflation reduction, etc. — when less than 10 percent of its spending goes to that purpose. Any portion of the other 90-plus percent which does not fund mischief is still illegitimate, because it was sold to Congress and the people on false pretenses.

Yeah, No

Chances of my getting much of what I want? Not good — no matter how many people want it with me.

What I Expect This Year (continued)

They Still Won’t Be Serious about Serious Things

We will continue to see the current regime be fundamentally unserious about war, the fate of other nations, and the security of this one. The frivolous attitude behind the Secretary of Defense’s recent failure to advise the Commander-in-Chief that he’d be incapacitated for a few days is the same attitude behind the systematically inept, bureaucratically undermined, disastrous US departure from Afghanistan. The difference is that SecDef’s foolishness this time, so far as we know, didn’t kill a lot of people and leave thousands or millions to be slaughtered, tortured, or oppressed by the Taliban.

Like DOJ, IRS, and other departments and agencies, the Department of Defense is just another locus of power to these people, and power exists primarily for increasing power, even if that distracts catastrophically from the organization’s mission, gets a lot of people killed, and gives aid and comfort to our enemies.

Speaking of deadly official indifference, again in 2024 we’ll hear little news (unless we seek it) about Christians being slaughtered around the world. The UN, the White House, the State Department, Big Media, and other key institutions simply don’t care. Over 5,000 Christians were killed for their faith in 2023 in Nigeria alone, according to Open Doors. If anyone in the executive branch is upset about that, I haven’t heard. And it’s not just Nigeria.

China will continue to exploit our lack of seriousness on numerous fronts, including trade, environmental policy, TikTok, and quite possibly Taiwan. We’ll continue to support both sides of wars in Ukraine and Gaza. We’ll talk tough, then do nothing when Venezuela finally invades Guyana for its oil. We’ll speak strong words but fail to slow or reverse the flight of manufacturing from the US. We’ll continue to elevate Iran, the leading sponsor of world terrorism, including the October 7 atrocities, as a regional rival to Israel — a calculated but catastrophic Middle East policy from the Obama administration.

Inflation Spin

We’ll hear a lot of crowing about how the Biden administration has reduced inflation. It’s true, inflation has come down, though not all the way to a healthy level. It’s also true that, because of the COVID-excused excesses under President Trump, we were going to have some inflation anyway. What the Bigs don’t want us to remember is two-fold. Under Biden they made inflation far worse, essentially pouring gasoline on a fire that had already resumed burning bright. And a better inflation rate today doesn’t replace the lost 30 percent, give or take, of every dollar’s value, which they intentionally stole through inflation they caused by overheating the money supply and borrowing on a massive scale.

Some of the more distantly out-of-touch will also continue to declare that the economy is in great shape, and so are Americans’ household budgets. We’re just too dumb to know it.

Imaginary Book Bans and Other Incendiary Rhetoric

The especially malleable and people with a certain agenda will continue to claim that keeping inappropriate (including age-inappropriate) materials out of primary school libraries and curricula is “book banning,” because that phrase sounds bad and opposing it makes them feel righteous.

Last week I read an interview with someone who is opening a bookstore in Florida that will emphasize <cough> books that are banned in Florida. She expects to sell a lot of them. Which is to say, they’re not really banned, are they? If they were, either she couldn’t get the stock for her shelves in the first place, or she’d realistically worry about the long arm of the law confiscating her inventory, shutting her down, or even clapping her and her customers in irons.

I guess I’m saying Big Culture and Big Power will keep using words as incendiary weapons, not for meaning. Speaking of which, normal, sensible Americans will continue to be labeled extremists, even domestic terrorists, for resisting the injection of extremism into their children’s minds and their institutions. Happily, despite the name-calling and the official harassment it seeks to justify, good people will continue to assert, with uneven success and at some sacrifice, the importance of the family, the inherent rights of parents, and the vast superiority of actual science to The Science™.

We’ll Keep Pretending Not to Know What Everyone Knows

(Again, I’m using “we” loosely.)

Big Media and Big Democracy™ will continue to insist that there is No Concrete Evidence™ of Joe Biden’s participation in his family’s lucrative, corrupt relationships with foreign powers. Granted, there’s little or no actual concrete among the piles of evidence; it’s mostly papers and electrons, plus some eyewitness testimony. By that standard, there’s No Concrete Evidence™ of any electoral irregularities in 2020 either. Or was that No Credible Evidence™, because by definition, conveniently, it’s not credible if we refuse to believe it?

They Were Against Crime After They Were for It

The Left — because it’s an election year — will keep trying to look tough on crime, after sanctimoniously filling many cities’ streets with criminals and letting them pillage without consequence. They’ll keep making speeches about reducing crime, in between their speeches about how it’s racist to enforce the law. We’ll see a symbolic act or two, like we did last week, when the DOJ announced for the first time under the Biden administration that it’s seeking the death penalty in a murder case. Capital punishment may be against their principles, but clinging to power trumps all other principles. (Forgive the verb.)

Lies Without Consequence and Vain Expectations of Trust

There will continue to be no electoral consequences for Democrats who get caught lying about big stuff (e.g. Congressman Adam Schiff) and who dismantle due process when they can, or for Democrats who engage in racism and race-baiting, even inciting violence or challenging election results that don’t go their way.

We’ll continue to be lectured on our duty to trust Big Government and Big Media, while they continue to compete for new lows on the public trust meter. They think the problem is that we don’t trust them; they feel entitled to our trust. It’s our fault, not theirs, that we’ve learned they’re unworthy of our trust.

Dog Wagging

We will continue to see the tail wag the dog. For example, after months of attacks by a known enemy on international shipping, we <cough> might finally launch a small counterattack a few days before the Iowa caucus.

Sometimes different body parts wag the dog. For example, we’ll continue to be told that it’s not XX and XY chromosomes which make women women and men men, respectively. It’s their feelings when they’re at their most impressionable and confused, including childhood and adolescence. And to question this or fail to pretend it’s true — in our policy as well as our pronouns — is bigotry, hatred, and child abuse.

Tens of Millions in Denial

H. L. Mencken wrote, “Democracy is the theory that the people know what they want and deserve to get it good and hard.” We and the people all around us have been getting it good and hard.

Yet tens of millions of voters will remain in denial, incapable of acknowledging that they voted for all this devastation in 2020, from internal divisions and inflation to foreign policy ineptitude and growing international unrest. It was all predictable, but stopping Bad Orange Man, the mean tweeter, mattered to them so much more. (As I said in the first post, I don’t want Biden or Trump on my November ballot.)

Speaking of things half the people cannot admit, we will continue to see our legal system weaponized to bankrupt, humiliate, terrify, and discourage the rulers’ present and future political opponents and their families (and donors and other supporters). In this corrupt practice a conviction is the optional cherry on top, if it ever comes, but it isn’t the point. The chief perversion is using the process itself to punish, with or without eventual conviction, when the process was created to determine the truth prior to any punishment.

More Wishful Thinking

I wish for a nation of voters finally to take seriously not only our horrific national debt, spawned by huge budget deficits, but also our unfunded obligations, which are even more trillions than the debt. I wish for this to happen well before we have to face the full measure of devastation we are due. I imagine us fixing Social Security, for example, before we have the politically unbearable choice between massive tax increases and massive benefit cuts not many years hence (perhaps eight or nine).

I wish for us to abandon Modern Monetary Theory, which conveniently (at least in its popularization) foresees no adverse consequences to ballooning the money supply, borrowing without limit, and spending without restraint. This approach makes sense only to the most childish of children, the most addicted of addicts, and the United States Congress.

I wish to see us decisively reject the uber-elite program which says we’ll soon own nothing and be glad of it. Whatever we don’t own, someone else will. If they own our residences and cars and control our food, water, fuel supplies, and health care, they control us.

Finally, our 246- (or 235-) year-old nation includes increasing millions who have been taught in its own schools to despise it, politically and culturally, and who evidently want to live under any system other than the one which made Americans (including them) the most free and prosperous people in history. My wish is that those people will get what they want, if they ever do, somewhere else.

What Can Americans Do?

This first thought is from the previous post but bears repeating: We can work to stay informed, gathering news, analysis, and opinion from diverse sources. We can find and follow thoughtful people across the political spectrum. We can suspend our belief, especially of things we really want to believe, until we’ve given matters enough time, thought, and attention that we have a reasonable sense of what might be true and whom to trust and how far.

We can resist tyranny issuing from any level of government we can reach — wisely, confidently, together, and, God willing, without violence.

We can pray, and listen when (and after) we pray. I’m quite certain God is a member of no political party but is firmly on the side of truth, freedom, justice, and peace.

And we can cheer up. We can allow ourselves joy. Yes, there are great challenges and dangers in the world and in our nation. There always have been. But we are greatly blessed, we have crucial work to do, and I’m convinced that in some important ways this is the best time there has ever been to live on Planet Earth.

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Photo credit: BoliviaInteligente on Unsplash

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