William S. Lind writes: The most important question in this election is what the peasants do when the election is over and they are again shut out. Many may simply give up on politics and go home. Others may remain politically engaged as the equivalent of Cleveland Browns fans, whose motto is, “There’s always next year.”
But many from both parties may stay angry, stay involved, but realize that neither party offers a way forward. Those people have the potential to create what usually happens when a corrupt and incompetent Establishment endlessly clings to power: a pre-revolutionary situation.
Pre-revolutionary situations do not necessarily involve mobs in the streets carrying torches and pitchforks, though they certainly can. Both the Trump and Sanders campaigns to some degree reflect a pre-revolutionary situation. My great if slender hope, following Establishment victories in both parties’ nomination contests, an independent Trump-Sanders ticket, would clearly manifest a pre-revolutionary situation. Post-election manifestations could include a variety of politically-oriented mass movements, including one for a constitutional convention.
The most likely direction such a pre-revolutionary situation would take, I think, is one for devolution: the movement of power away from Washington to state and local levels. This would not be a “mother-may-I”, hat-in-hand request to Washington for devolution, but concrete actions at state and local levels to seize power. On issues ranging from gay “marriage” to the use of GMO seeds, states and localities, through their governments or through direct action, would nullify rulings coming out of Washington. Should the Left obtain a five-vote majority on the Supreme Court, nullification by state governments might become a powerful movement in itself. State National Guards, forced to choose between home and Washington, might decide to take orders from home.
A wise Establishment, faced with a pre-revolutionary situation, would accommodate it with Constitutional devolution, which is to say a return to federalism. Life in South Carolina would again be allowed to differ from life in Massachusetts, as it did when our republic still followed its Constitution.
But falling Establishments are seldom wise. It may turn out that the question of who sits in the White House come January, 2017 is about as important as who became Roman Emperor in 450 A.D. favicon
