Angelo Codevilla has an essential piece today on the necessity of a new American Exodus from the vast emerging commercial and governmental system of Elites that is increasingly contrary to the idea of republican self-government.
The essential argument is that things have gone too far and it is far too late for us to “vote our way out” and we have no recourse left now but to disengage from the system entirely. That the power of the system stems from our consent and our compliance and that we must simply withdraw them both.
Shorter Codevilla (as the kids say): we must go Galt.
How do we do that? Well Codevilla has some higher-level society-wide ideas that are nice in theory but feel a bit to me like waking up one day and deciding to climb Mt. Everest without any previous moutaineering experience. And he offers very few ideas about what we can all do today, right now, that might make a difference, even if it’s a small one.
Part of the reason the Elites went so nuts for the COVID lockdowns and mask mandates is that, as Codevilla points out, one of the key rationales for the lockdowns was to separate us from one another. Not only have they made it almost impossible for us to meet up face-to-face, but because of masks, even when I AM speaking with someone face-to-face, communication is diificult and I often have to ask people to repeat themselves over-and-over. A people separated are a people that cannot be organized into an effective resistance. How do we fight that? One way we do it is by communicating to each other the small steps we are taking in our own lives to achieve the grand results teased in Codevilla’s essay.
So… here’s what I’m doing. Parhaps you’re doing some of the same things, perhaps you have other better ideas. Let’s talk about it. Let’s… hmmmm, what’s the word?
Oh, I know… let’s organize.
CANCELLING CANCEL CULTURE
Codevilla says that when corporations try to force beliefs on their employees under threat of canceling those who refuse to bow, we should organize into groups and simply say “no.” As he says “They can’t fire everyone.” The problem is that in the heat of the moment, when faced with a requirement to submit to racialized abuse disguised as anti-racist training or be fired, it’s already too late to organize. On top of that, we can never be sure who the Judases are. Which of your “friends” at the company will run to HR to pre-emtively denounce you the moment you suggest an organizaed resistance to company mandates? And in any case, I think Codevilla is wrong about one thing… they CAN fire us all. They can survive a labor shortage much longer than you and I can survive being unemployed.
It seems to me that the best thing we can do is financially support those who do stand up. In that way we can show the next wave of William Wallaces that the consequences of standing up to oppression are not as grave as they seem. A few weeks ago I wrote a blog post about Jodi Shaw, the single mother who stood up to the administration at Smith College after they tried to force her into a struggle session disguised as “training” that cast her as some kind of white devil responsible for all society’s ills. She fought back and embarrassed the college on the national stage. Now yes, she was forced to resign, but here is the key. She startred a GoFundMe page to help replace her salary while she transitions into a job that is less susceptible to cancellation. She set a goal of $150,000 and her current haul sits at double that, $300,000. That’s a hell of an incentive to stand up for yourself. We need to do more of that. I donated to Jodi, did you?
I also love Substack, both the service and the concept. I believe we must make common cause with people who disagree with us, especially when they are right. I put in that category journalists like Glenn Greenwald, Bari Weiss, Matt Taibbi and even Andrew Sullivan. All four of them were cancelled, in some cases (Greenwald) they were ousted from the institutions they themselves created, by the very same woke mobs they made the mistake of employing. This effort has to be bipartisan. We are facing an existential crisis of Democracy and we need to take our allies where we find them. We can go back to arguing with Bari and Glenn about tax policy and foreign wars after we defeat those who seek to destroy our Democracy as founded. At this critical moment, we need each other.
There’s a old saying that the way you know you’re over the target is when you start taking flack. And Substack is currently under vicious assault by the old guard media who hate the idea of a community of free and heterodox thought that exists outside their gated communities of state-approved opinion. Insitutions like Substack, who can piss off our enemies to this degree, are always worth supporting. Substack scares the hell out of them, and that is a good thing.
One last idea… we must disengage from the cultural events that have been corrupted by the Elites into programs for bludgeoning us into submission. I’m thinking about events like The Oscars, The Emmys, and The Grammys of course, but those events are low hanging fruit. We have to think bigger and we have to be willing to give up things we like in order to prove the point. Get off ESPN, for one thing. ESPN’s daytime programming is basically THE VIEW for Dudes. You don’t need that. It’s high-sugar, empty-calorie cotton candy. What difference does it make who Shannon Sharpe, or Jamele Hill or Colin Cowherd thinks will win on Sunday? The game is going to be played no matter what they think. Ignore them and everyone like them. Don’t give them your time or attention, they are not worthy of either. Instead, spend your time with independent minded podcasters like Joe Rogan, Megyn Kelly and Jocko Willink… the system hates them too and, after all, the enemies of our enemies, etc etc. And if you can, maybe tune out the actual games as well. Our sports leagues, once the very embodiment of patriotism and liberty, now care more about expanding their audience in China than they care about you. Show them the feeling is mutual.
BUILDING OUR OWN SYSTEMS OF SUPPORT
In my day job I’m an academic… a salesman… of ideas and concepts, not products. I’ve spent my life training my mind and not my hands. I’m not the kind of guy who knows how to build or fix a lot of things. So my own journey from cog in the machine to liberty-minded prepper required (and requires) a lot of instruction. Most of that instruction came from a blue-collar chicken farmer with a high school education in central Texas. Jack Spirko walked away from a lucrative tech career a decade ago to start THE SURVIVAL PODCAST. I’ve been listening for about eight years and almost everything I’ve learned about self-sufficiency, growing your own food, self defense theory, water catchment, stock trading, cryptocurrency and even real estate investing I learned from Jack. Maybe you have your own swami to whom you listen, if you do I’d love to know about them in the comments, but if you don’t I highly recommend starting with Jack.
The other thing about The Survival Podcast that I love is the community that has built up around it. Hundreds of thousands of like-minded supporters of liberty. Got a question about how to do or fix or find something? Someone on that forum will have the answer for you.
The Survival Podcast is where I first learned about Cryptocurrency. It’s because of Jack that I bought a single Bitcoin for $400. I had never heard of cryptocurrency before I started listening to TSP. Jack was able to explain it in terms I could understand and I decided to buy in as a way of supporting what seemed like a good way to create a currency that the Elites couldn’t touch or manipulate. My only regret, obviously, is that I didn’t buy a hundred of the damned things.
I’ve also joined HELEN’S PAGE, where you can find my novel OWL BOY AND THE VOODOO PRIEST for sale. Glenn Reynolds (The Instapundit) and his wife are creating a Liberty-minded marketplace for those of us who are afraid we’ll one day run afoul of the Oligarchs at Amazon and Ebay and Google. Supporting Liberty is going to be hard work, and yeah it’s a much bigger pain in the ass to sell your work on twenty different marketplaces than it is to sell it on a single site called Amazon… but what is that simplicity worth to you? What will it matter how much more efficient the Amazon marketplace is if they can kick you off that platform at any time and for any reason up to and including what will eventually be your social credit score?
Finally, get off Twitter and Facebook and Instagram. They are owned and run by people who hate and want to subjugate you. Instead keep current on apps that seek to create communities that can’t be cancelled. Parler tried but they underestimated their enemies. I’m on Locals right now, Kurt Schlichter is in the process of creating a pretty good little community there. I like Clubhouse too. Are they completely immune from being cancelled? Probably not, and I’m sure we’ll have to keep moving from site-to-site to stay one step ahead of the bad guys… but hey, that’s the nature of insurgency. An effective insurgency is one that forces its enemy to play an endless game of Whack-a-Mole. Welcome to the fight.
And if all else fails…
WALK AWAY
There’s another old saying that I first heard from Jack Spirko… “money goes where it’s treated well.” I think people should behave the same way. States that abuse your time, money and body are not entitled to your residency (or your taxes). We are long past the time where places like New York, Illinois, and California give us more than they take away. We must embrace Ronald Reagan’s “Laboratories of Democracy” approach and simply walk away. For most of us, the broader online world has made walking away easier than ever. Find the state that lines up best with your personal values and go there. Stop thinking about it and just go.
What else am I missing? I’m looking for more and better ideas than what I’ve outlined above. Hit me up in the comments, and Happy Resisting.
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