This series of tweets by Aristophanes was on Twitter/X this morning. My thoughts continue after the quote.

I was talking to my wife in the kitchen about the election this morning, and she asked me how political relations got so bad. We all know this is the case, but it took a minute for me to think things through in order to explain my take on how we got here.

“What’s different?” is trust, and the expectations Americans have of each other. This neverending revolution by the left is’t recent, it started in the 60’s and became the Long March, only really and truly manifesting when Obama became president in 2008.

But at the individual level, a big part of the reason Conservatives were asleep at the wheel throughout all of this is the benefit of the doubt given throughout the 90’s and 00s. There was this idea that politics was a fair contest where both sides were Americans that wanted what was best for the country, but had different ideas about how to do that.

But at some point it became pretty clear that the left brought a knife to the boxing match, while the ref reminded the right not to go for any low blows. They began a campaign of enforcing a punitive system against anything counter to their zealotry. They were treating the right as enemies while we were still acting like we were still different parts of the same team.

Slowly, and recently, the Right has begun to recognize that the left sees us not as their countrymen, but as their enemy, and over time we began to respond accordingly, unfortunately from the bottom up, starting with Gamergate.

When Trump wins (and he will win), it’s important to realize that the fight isn’t over.

The enemy will continue to come back until by sheer punitive force they’ve been disempowered into no longer being a threat. Their power structure needs to be entirely dismantled, or they’ll simply come back with lessons learned and do the same things with even more vigor, and next time, there won’t be another Donald Trump to throw a spanner in the works.

Reconcilliation from *either* side is only going to happen through reconstruction of the other. While the right didn’t impose this condition on the country, it’s become zero sum. The only way we’re made whole again is when one side wins and the other bends the knee in assent. Only then can mutual trust that we’re all roughly on the same page be restored.

As long as the left sees us as enemies, we have to assume the responsibilities of governance and use that power to engage in a similar campaign of punitive pressure to what they did to us. It’s only over when they’ve been reconstructed to the point that all of the most destructive tenets of the civic religion they have been enforcing upon us are well outside the new overton window of acceptable behavior that we get the chance to set.

This means we need the biggest possible “mandate of heaven” in the form of serious gains in the House and the Senate, and once we have that, we need to use it. We need to beat them with that stick, but not just that stick, until we have a reasonable confidence that this ideology is dead and not coming back to bother us for the rest of our lives.

My overarching point here is that winning the election is not beating the left with a stick of any kind, it’s taking the stick they’ve been hitting us with away from them. They need to be poleaxed into the dirt until they aren’t willing to get up and take back the stick.

I have said more times than I can remember that this election is for all the marbles.

It is to live to fight another day.

I said in December 2021 things will never be the same again. 

There is no going back to the way things were. At all. 

Our world and life before 2020, Covid, and 2016 no longer exists. 

We can only deal with what is in front of us.

Which side do you want to live under?

Which side do you want imposing their will on you, your children, and your grandchildren?

Which side do you want imposing their will on your business, your church, and your community? 

There is no mythical middle ground. 

That died a long time ago.

Either the Leftists will get the green light to ramp up imposing their satanic will on the country or MAGA will begin to impose their patriotic will on the country.

If the Leftists win, we will look back on the Biden-Harris administration as the last few months of the good old days. 

Anyone – including so-called Christian leaders – attempting to convince you otherwise is either deliberately clueless or working for the Enemy of our souls. 

As I’ve said over and over again…

This is why we have gone through these last four years. As many American citizens as possible must be on the side of doing what must be done. 

This is why the MAGA alliances that have been formed over the past six to eight months have been so critical.

Am I completely happy with all of them?

No.

But I know they are necessary at this point in our Republic’s history. 

There are difficult days ahead.

No one will be able to pretend historic and nation-shaping events aren’t going on.

As much as some of us want to escape into our quiet and simple life, it won’t be an option.

Every one of us will be needed for what lies ahead. 

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