Help wanted: Leadership against the oligarchy

FPI / April 4, 2021

Needed: Leaders willing to step forward and guide a national effort "to discredit and stop the oligarchy’s growing totalitarianism," an analysis said.

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, Missouri Sen. Josh Hawley, and Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul are three Republicans who have set examples that other would-be leaders should follow, intelligence specialist Angelo Codevilla wrote for American Greatness on March 30.

"Who will lead the deplorables’ exodus from the bondage that the political-corporate-cultural oligarchy imposes on America? The power that the oligarchy has gathered since 2015 pales by comparison with the resentment it created thereby, and the wave of public opinion that is building against it," Codevilla wrote.

"Standing against the madness of transgenderism, flying in the face of the most objective truths, may well be the easiest" of the tasks these leaders must undertake, Codevilla noted.

Here are some others:

• To reject as the political power grab that it is the complex of closures, mask mandates, and lockdowns that continue to be foisted upon Americans ostensibly to protect against the Covid-19 virus; and to reiterate the truth that a virus that has taken root in a population will go through it, quarantines notwithstanding.

• To treat the Biden administration’s plan to impose vaccination passports via cooperation with “the private sector” as the double travesty of American law that it is: because it is unconstitutional, because it would surely grow into a Chinese-style social-credit system, and because it consists of franchising public powers to private entities unaccountable to the voters.

• To stop K-12 schools from teaching critical race theory, i.e. that white people are intrinsically bad, and to forbid corporations and government agencies from forcing “training” in that ideology on their employees.

• To call out all that is done and said about “white privilege” and “white supremacy” as naked racism and as a cover for privileged persons — mostly white — to guard their personal and class privileges.

• To lead Americans to insist that elections be decided only by ballots from duly registered voters, secured from the moment they are cast, and counted transparently. And to reject manipulation of elections in the name of anti-racism.

• To lead Americans against the Justice Department’s, the FBI’s, and parts of the armed forces’ campaign of suppression of opposition to the oligarchy; to reject references to shadowy right-wing “seditious” organizations that turn out to be essentially nonexistent (e.g., QAnon) or to be led substantially by federal infiltrators (e.g., the Proud Boys); and to condemn the publicly hyped prosecution of allegedly associated individuals.

DeSantis has used his position more than anyone, Codevilla noted, "to lead by deeds more than by words in a number of these tasks. He has banned the teaching of race hate in his state. He invited the oligarchy’s ire by removing the state’s mandate to wear anti-covid masks, and has said he regretted having agreed to even a single day of lockdown. He has promised to refuse to recognize vaccination passports in his state. He has also introduced a state law to make it possible for Floridians who feel they have been censored or otherwise hurt by the Big Tech social media platforms, to sue them. He has already established safeguards against ballot tampering. In the spring of 2021, his is the example for would-be leaders to follow."

Hawley "unable as a senator to take executive actions, has called onto himself the ire that the oligarchy heaps on the millions of Americans who refuse to swallow the narrative that the 2020 presidential election was free and fair," Codevilla wrote. "His doing so reminds millions that, the oligarchy’s intimidation notwithstanding, it is right and proper to think and speak of the truth of its massive and unconstitutional interference in the election — which the oligarchs even bragged about in Time."

Paul, himself a medical doctor, "called to account Dr. Anthony Fauci, the oligarchy’s point man on Covid-19 restrictions, for his many misrepresentations and lies about scientific matters. So authoritatively have his questions and explanations been that the oligarchy has not unleashed its customary barrage of accusations, knowing that doing so would further encourage ordinary Americans to follow him," Codevilla noted.

South Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem was in that conversation, Codevilla noted, but her "recent self-disqualification as a potential leader bids us recall that the public will follow only those who actually lead them by personally defying the oligarchy. Focusing on themselves is the worst thing that they can do."

Noem had seemed to be such a leader as DeSantis, Hawley, and Paul, but when "the test came, she failed it," Codevilla wrote. "A bill passed overwhelmingly by her legislature would have prohibited biological males from competing on girls’ and women’s teams. She declared eagerness to sign it. Then, the usual corporate executives threatened South Dakota business with boycotts, and the Chamber of Commerce transmitted the pressure. Her claim to have followed the advice of unnamed 'legal experts, legal scholars,' was standard responsibility-shifting. Her boast to be building a broad coalition to build support for something like the bill she had vetoed elicited derision."

So, who will America’s deplorables follow, and why?

"The Gospels, as well as common sense, urge us to pay attention to deeds done in the face of opposition," Codevilla wrote. "Each and every thing that the oligarchy does to trammel the lives of ordinary people cries out for remedy. These require persons with a national following to put themselves at the head of popular affirmations of truth, justice, and the American way, certain that they will be 'Trumped' — that the oligarchy will dehumanize them as it did Donald Trump."

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