martial law
One of the great paradoxes of American democracy is that much of what makes it worth having also renders it vulnerable to mortal threats. This is particularly true when the threats are internal, and the domestic enemies adept at using their constitutionally guaranteed rights and privileges to gnaw away at the society that nurtured and protected them with the aim of bringing it down in ruins.

Future historians, doubtless writing in Chinese, will marvel at how the radical Left in the U.S. essentially weaponized the Bill of Rights, claiming its protection as they worked to undermine the entire system. They will doubtless express astonishment and satisfaction at the speed and ease with which they came to dominate first academe, then the media, and finally one of the two major political parties in the U.S. - the Democrats.

There will likely even be wry grins of amusement at the assignment of colors by the networks to the two parties around 2000. Here the Democrats, increasingly red politically with little or no center, came to be called "blue" while the Republicans, mostly "true blue Americans" as the term was once used, by default became "red" with its undercurrent of the enemy. Just a bit of gallows humor at a wake.

Where We Stand Today

Nothing defines better where the Democrats stand today in Washington D.C. than the old saying "I stole it (the election), fair and square." And they did, even as the media - with an ever-smaller handful of exceptions - and left-wing academic pundits rewrite history in good Marxist fashion - and let's not fool ourselves, that IS the prevailing fashion now.

The Democrats and their "cultural Marxist" agenda dominate the academic world. They and their "cancel culture" offshoot dominate virtually all of the media. They hold the White House and both Houses of the Congress, where executive orders and legislation emphasizing "diversity" and "racial equity" are centerpieces. Six months of rioting, looting, arson, mayhem and murder afflicting hundreds of cities across the country are ignored, while a bizarre entry by a few score oddly assorted people into the Capitol has acquired the aura of the storming of the Bastille and the assault on the Winter Palace in St. Petersburg combined.

It gets worse. We see the assault on monuments and histories being resumed. Anything that does not feed into the preferred narrative now is simply to be erased. It'll take time, but I would not be at all surprised to see Confederate memorials and gravesites at National Military Parks removed. I also doubt if even a tough governor like Kristi Noem could withstand the predictable assault certain to come on the once famous and soon-to-be infamous Mount Rushmore in South Dakota.

We also see the demonization of conservatives generally and Republicans particularly as "domestic terrorists," strange as it sounds coming from the party that refused to allow ANY condemnation of the riots that swept the country in 2020. Tucker Carlson aptly characterized it as a declaration of war by the Democrat controlled government on (at least) half the country, and was appalled by it. He described it as a "dark fantasy," but it is no fantasy: the worst mistake people targeted as enemies of the state can make is to believe the people who say that don't really mean it. But these Democrats do, and have legislation in preparation writing that criminality into law to codify it.

Worst of all is what the Democrats are doing to ensure that they do not lose their grip on the power they now hold - and in fact, want to expand. Legislation to grant statehood to the District of Columbia is on its way, and will be followed by statehood for Puerto Rico - giving the Democrats 4 more certain seats in the U.S. Senate and 3-5 others in the House of Representatives, depending on how the census goes.

A clear path to citizenship and the franchise for illegals, both those here now and those coming, only adds to their popular vote. Legislation (it is House Resolution 1) awaiting the outcome of the Senate trial of Trump prohibits states from requiring identification to register, vote, and cast mail-in ballots - essentially extending the fraud in a few states that gave them the 2020 election, to the country as a whole.

Nor are the Democrats forgetting currently elected Republicans in both houses of the Congress. Claiming to be threatened by many of their erstwhile "colleagues," they clearly intend to use a combination of calls for resignation, recall efforts for those who do not resign, and expulsion of members who refuse to resign or survive recalls. It isn't simply firebrands like Ocasio-Cortez who are pushing this, it is also Nancy Pelosi as Speaker of the House. She is assuredly despicable and at least partially demented, but that does not mean she isn't also dangerous - quite the contrary.

Dodging the Bullet?

A while back, I wrote about dystopias, but the viciousness and utter vindictiveness of the Democrats exceed by far my own dismal expectations. It is, of course, true to form - Marxist form, that is - and shows signs of being patterned on what the victorious "Reds" (read "blues" here) meted out to the defeated "Whites" after Russia's Civil War.

Is there any way this could have been averted, without going into all of the "what ifs" of the past four years? Only one, that I can see, and several of us pointed it out earlier to no avail. This was for then-President Trump to take a tough stand when the riots broke out in late May, all but a few in Democrat-run cities. Give the mayors and the governors of those states 24 hours to bring them under control. If they failed to do so (which they did), invoke the Insurrection Act, and arrest a dozen or so of the most outrageous mayors and governors for sedition.

Then send Marines and regular Army soldiers (not National Guard) to some of the most violent cities with orders to crush the insurrection. The media would have howled, but it howled anyway. The riots would likely have ended bloodily - dead looters and arsonists are not good repeat offenders. And the Democrats would have been too terrified to have tried to so openly steal the 2020 election - it is unbelievable how unapologetically blatant the election fraud was.

But Trump hesitated, and we all are lost. I habitually prefer to believe that most conundrums have workable solutions, but sometimes they don't, and this is one such time. I don't want to hear any more about a popular uprising or some distant psyops. Men and women who failed to fight for their children and their cities and their Constitution, aren't good candidates for taking up arms against an elected government - legitimate or not - with control of the armed forces and intelligence services.

Former Congresswoman Tulsi Gabbard (D-HI) called on President Biden to disavow those in his own party leading the charge against the rest of us. But neither he nor Kamala Harris will do that - why should they? If they were that sort of people, we wouldn't be in this situation now.

We may have contested elections of a sort in 2022, and who knows? Perhaps even something in 2024 and later for the sake of appearances. I just wonder what shape the coming Long Night will take, and how those of us who love our country will rationalize our abysmal failure to forestall the "Blue Terror."
Alan Ned Sabrosky (PhD, University of Michigan) is a ten-year US Marine Corps veteran. He served two tours in Vietnam with the 1st Marine Division and is a graduate of the US Army War College. He can be contacted at docbrosk@comcast.net