Author: Dan Newman

America is not in the middle of a revolution — it is a reactionary “putsch” — or a coordinated attempt to overthrow a government. It started four years ago immediately upon a group of people understanding that their long quiet and deadly push to the left politically had been railroaded by a conservative billionaire from Queens. What people are they? The sort of people who had acquired position and influence as a result of globalization who suddenly found themselves out of power for the first time in decades. They watched in horror as voters across the world chose Brexit in the UK, Donald Trump and other populist and conservative-nationalist candidates in the U.S.

Those four sentences explain the storm of unrest battering American cities from coast to coast and making waves in Europe as well. The storm’s ferocity — the looting, the mobs, the mass lawlessness, the deranged slogans like #DefundPolice — terrifies ordinary Americans. Many conservatives believe they are facing a revolution targeting the very foundations of American order.

But when national institutions bow (or kneel) to the street fighters’ demands, it should tell us that something else is going on. We aren’t dealing with a Marxist revolt, even if some within this uproar scream hard-left rhetoric. What’s playing out is a counter-revolution of the entrenched elitist class — academia, media, large corporations, ‘experts,’ Big Tech — against the nationalist revolution launched in 2016 when Donald Trump shot their balloon out of the sky. The supposed insurgents and the elites are marching in the streets together, taking the knee together.

They’re not seeking some new arrangement, but a return to the pre-Trump status quo which was working out very well for them. It was working out less-well for the working class of all races, who bore the brunt of their preferred policy mix: open borders, free trade without limits, aggressive cultural liberalism that destroyed tradition and community, and a ‘global governance’ that purposely handicapped democracy and politics.

Conservatives generally don’t tend to pay much attention to class analysis. But in this case, it does help to explain what’s going on. And it helps to shine a light of the truth of social movements that disguise themselves and can get mistaken for revolutionary leftism. We at TruthNewsNetwork have called it that way. Why? Because we could find no other purpose for all that is happening than that.

Trump survived it all. Now comes the new wave of rioters and mad anarchists, which many corporates and Democratic governors and mayors have actively encouraged, even as they continue to bar children from public parks and families from holding outdoor funerals, going to church and work, citing COVID-19 risks.

But wait: riots and statue-toppling — such things aren’t pleasant to establishment figures, are they? The logic becomes obvious when you see it as a form of class struggle. For all its fury, the storm of the riots ends. Their demands for ongoing racial fairness, equality, and attacks on law enforcement ends. There’s little in their cries about labor injustice, wages, and job security. Just demands for ‘representation’ or diversity (on corporate boards, in university curricula, etc). And, of course, the firing of those who say the wrong or awkward thing in the digital public square, in workplaces or in classrooms: you know, “Cancel Culture.”

The goal isn’t to repair economic injustices. You remember those protests and demands from the past: massive inequalities in wealth, health and job security. The goal today is 180 degrees opposite: to compromise, to defer, to smooth over, to hide these substantive disagreements, and instead have battles on methods of operations and social rule and racial changes.

Which social class most excels at politically correct treatment of others? That would be the professional-managerial class, the laptop class. Its children learn the communication and speech lingo for discussing ‘issues of race, gender, and sexuality’ from an early age. They’re expected to have mastered it by the time they take their entry-level jobs. It’s a skill that private schools are positively teaching already.

Working-class people, meanwhile, are most likely to struggle with this language. Even when they mean well they don’t always get it right, not because the rules constantly shift with the multiple and dramatic changes in race theory and LGBTQ desires and demands. By protecting the requirements to speak and think correctly — and raising the stakes for failures — the “new” liberal class has now created a new mechanism for staying at the top and keeping the peasants — American’s working-class — down: especially those who voted the wrong way in 2016.

So whatever you do, don’t call it a leftist revolution. With the flags, the protests, the kneeling, and the new language, it’s the OPPOSITE of war or revolution. The outcome is certainly unknown, but the class war is thriving and gaining strength every day.

Best Example of this “Counter-Revolution”

Former NFL star and activist Colin Kaepernick marked July Fourth by sharing a video of actor James Earl Jones reciting Frederick Douglass’s historic speech, “What to the Slave is the Fourth of July” with Kaepernick calling the holiday a “celebration of white supremacy.”

The video shows images of the Declaration of Independence, slaves, Klu Klux Klan members, lynchings and police brutality as Jones’s voice narrates in the background: “Fellow-citizens, pardon me, allow me to ask, why am I called upon to speak here today? What have I, or those I represent, to do with your national independence? Are the great principles of political freedom and of natural justice, embodied in that Declaration of Independence, extended to us?”

Kaepernick captioned the video with strong condemnation of racism and a call for “liberation for all” in the future.

“Black people have been dehumanized, brutalized, criminalized, and terrorized by America for centuries, and are expected to join your commemoration of ‘independence’, while you enslaved our ancestors,” he wrote. “We reject your celebration of white supremacy and look forward to liberation for all.”

His demonization of tens of millions of Americans happens while many citizens contemplate today’s Independence Day in the context of nationwide protests against police brutality and racism. Lawmakers have faced growing pressure in recent weeks to pass comprehensive police reform as well as other policies to protect Black Americans in the wake of the deaths of George Floyd and others who have been killed in police custody.

Many minority members of the nation look at Kaepernick as a “soldier for the cause” of fixing the nation: a Counter-revolution.

Summary

Here’s the hard part: being patient. How many times have you had to tell yourself the last few months “I wish I knew exactly what is going on!” If you’ve said or thought that, you’re one in about 200 million here and probably half that in Europe. To grasp an understanding of sorts that will probably answer your questions, consider this:

• The political class in this nation evolved into the beast we find ourselves feeding so that we can survive in the 60s. No one stepped out and declared “Here’s what we’re going to do.” It was found to be simpler to quietly takeover Washington with policies and regulations to grab as much power as possible without making it obvious it was happening.
• Serving in the U.S. government for two centuries had been an honorable vocation that paid less than did similar jobs in the private sector. But that was OK: you know, “the greater good.” But then with a booming economy that saw cost-of-living increases in the Potomac Valley skyrocket, D.C. political elitists began the process to even the scales for politicians personally. A process of increasing Congressional income and also the compensation for political bureaucrats began a slow increase that has peaked today. In doing so, we suddenly see an economic environment that not only has those in office paid equivalent to their private-sector counterparts, but are paid significantly more than their private counterparts. And why not? Congress determines not only their base pay but personal business and office expenses and has created a profitable retirement opportunity for all members of Congress. POWER!
• They make the rules for everything in government. Wouldn’t you if in the same scenario could legally increase your total compensation do so? The U.S. Congress makes all the rules, all the laws, all the regulations that control every sector of living in the U.S. They under almost permanent liberal leadership have done just that year after year.
• Campaign finance has not only increased the cost of getting elected, it created political action committees (PACS) that though strapped with regulations can legally raise tens of millions of dollars for candidates.  Super political action committees have less restraint on contributions and therefore take campaign donations to new heights.

None of the above has even been mentioned by the liberal leaders of this “counter-revolution.” They certainly do NOT want to upset the behemoth of the U.S. Government that has so successfully granted the elect in that group of elitists virtually unfettered power and legally unlimited collection of money.

Why would they support the destruction of that multi-billion-dollar piggy bank? The answer: THEY DON’T!

This entire travesty that dominates every newscast, every news story that centers on any part of this process is ancillary to their objective: destroy the populism and nationalism of Trump here, Brexit in the U.K., and dramatic civil unrest in Hong Kong to protect the power of the liberal left elitist that remains while doing all that’s necessary to re-implement what of it was torn away by Donald Trump.

Does that mean to not be concerned or to not be vocal about the evil we’re staring at? No. It simply states they don’t want to lose the gravy-train that has fed them so long just because Donald Trump messed it up!

They want it just the way it was before it was taken from them.

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If you were born in the 50s, that world looked nothing like the world in which you live today. Sure, we made it from the 50s through the JFK 60s, the hippies, LSD, and free love. In the 70’s we watched as the “cool” dudes and dudettes discovered cocaine gave everyone who partook a “new” high that wasn’t as crazy and didn’t blow your mind for taking one too many Acid Trips. American culture changed just like it always has throughout our history.

But through all of those changes, there was one constant, one rock, one eternal thing of substance: the core of the nation — its people, its citizens — always embraced true freedom and justice under the law. A lot of those teens didn’t believe it at the time because of the Vietnam War. But it was always there: a rock of stability they later learned was permanent for them.

There was craziness back then: we had the Black Panthers, The Weathermen, Bill Ayers, and Bernadette Dorne. We dealt with each and somehow never lost a sense of calmness, no matter what demonstrations and riots took place or what they looked like. Ayers bombed a New York police station.

1968 saw the height of the rebellion. There were constant demonstrations against the Vietnam War and the government that thrust us into it, knowing full well it was NOT a war to be won. Those Americans dreaded that evil feeling of helplessness as their draft numbers came up. Many saw that number as their death sentence. And many died. But the nation made it through it all, as did most of those young people.

With the turn of the century, things began to change — far more dramatically it seems today than we thought as the change took place. We discovered that the petulance in our children was NOT the same that we grew through. Our parents watched us and waited. But they knew we’d grow out of it.

Today, America’s youth are “different.” They don’t mature at the same age or in the same ways as we. These young Americans are angry and vicious, hiding a raw hunger for power under a brand new moralism. They don’t accept the status quo just because it’s the status quo. Yes, we hope they will eventually. But there’s no way to tell where they’re headed!

This side of 2000, a nation of high- tech teens revealed a new and different set of values and ways of thinking. They refuse to “pay the price” to get “there,” as did we. They want what they want, and they want it now. This gaggle of young Americans claims to deplore the capitalism that previous generations each grew to embrace, finding doing so was necessary to become anything in life — anything at all. But this generation deplores responsibility, the “normalcies” of their parents’ generation, and summarily reject commitment to anything longterm. They dodge marriage, buying homes, cars, and even spurn the responsibility of a leased place to live. They prefer to just “fly by the seat of their pants.” In a job interview today, the questions they ask most often early in that conversation are “How much does it pay, what are the benefits, how long is lunch, how much vacation do I get, and how long before I can take off for a few days?” Their own “Me-ism” devours them.

The Differences

In the late ’60s and ’70s, hundreds of bombs — REAL bombs of sorts — were detonated as various radical groups carried out their campaign against “Amerika.” According to The Los Angeles Times, “in California alone, 20 ­explosions a week rocked the state during the summer of 1970.’’ Our parents deplored the actions of these “radical young folks.” They couldn’t wait for those teenagers to grow up.

How many bombs will we see in the summer of 2020? Not so long ago, the radicalism of the 1960s seemed far behind us and a certain fixture in our rearview mirrors. Now it seems to have come roaring back.

In 1968, Leonard Bernstein entertained the Black Panthers for a fundraiser in his Park Avenue duplex. The Black Panthers were murderous thugs. But to a certain part of New York society, they were exciting moral fashion accessories. The Weathermen and Black Panthers have been reborn today as Antifa and Black Lives Matter (BLM), a well-funded outfit, whose founders are self-confessed “Marxists” bent on destroying America.

But now, in 2020, even more than in 1968, the leftist establishment is tripping over itself to embrace the radicals.

Does that mean we have to accept statues and other monuments to our past being defaced, toppled, destroyed? Does it mean that we have to stand by as police stations are incinerated and Bobby Seale’s call to “barbecue some pork” — i.e., murder some police — is resurrected on our city streets?

In 1968, it was mostly fancy people like Bernstein and Susan Sontag, who celebrated the Panthers and other radicals. There was still some resistance in the culture at large. Our parents were the products of a generation that fought to prevent any Americans from being forced to speak German or Japanese. They were disciplined and resolute. And they respected the prices for maintaining freedom and justice for all.

Today, the long march that commenced in the 1960s has proceeded wholesale through the schools, colleges, and the mainstream press. It is now marching through the corporate world. Businesses as disparate as Facebook and Brooks Brothers have issued abject letters of surrender to the rioters and looters who invaded America’s major cities.

We are meant to believe that the riots and anarchy we are witnessing across the country are legitimate in response to the death of George Floyd. But Floyd’s death was merely the pretext for anti-civilizational lawlessness.

In 1939, Evelyn Waugh noted that “the more elaborate the society, the more vulnerable it is to attack, and the more complete its collapse in case of defeat.” Waugh added: “At a time like the present, it is notably precarious. If it falls, we shall see not merely the dissolution of a few joint-stock corporations, but the spiritual and material achievements of our history.”

I think this is true. This is why, looking at the reprise of 1960s destructiveness on our streets, I am not inclined to say, “I told you so,” but rather: “We must do something about this. Now.”

Summary

Are we too late? Has the calendar flipped too fast too many times for us to take a pause, analyze, converse, and find consensus with this “today” generation: a world in which we can live with the shreds of our foundations on which THEY were raised while allowing them to flex their 21st-century muscles? Are there any parts of their mantra: socialism, lack of commitment to anything and anybody, hatred for capitalism and our free market — all of which are the fundamentals that made the world in which they were raised?

Most of us would never dream of embracing and acting-on the feelings and ideas on which they are acting today. We accepted far more of the morals and foundational elements of the generation of Americans that raised us than these youngsters are of ours. They seem sold-out to “throwing the baby out with the bathwater.” Everything goes!

The scariest thing to me as a father and grandfather is their lack of understanding of what is in the world that they think they want. They don’t understand the political structure of those teachers and professors who were born in the 60s’ “despise authority” era. Those hippies and free-love advocates wanted much of what these do. But at some point, they learned what they wanted could NOT be taken — it had to be developed. When they understood their task was not to turn the U.S. and its structure upside down, theirs’ was to teach this generation all that they had learned. But there is one significant addition to their education menu: HOW to do it.

That’s the scary part: many are confident they can do just that.

Is this our America…or is it theirs’?