Every day seems to bring new shocks to one’s sense of equilibrium and well-being and logic and it has gotten to the point where I agree with the author who referred to the effect of these horrible days as “the numbing of America.” Of course, like you, I have seen 2020 described in terms not permitted in these well-mannered precincts but which much better describe this annus horribilis we are living through now. 

That said, I have just read a review of Michael Anton’s new book, “The Stakes, America At The Point of No Return”, which has shaken me to my very core, as it not only offers a dreadful outlook for our future and, much more importantly, the future of our Nation as we have known it, but furnishes solid research and documentation in support of those prognoses. Mr. Anton, it will be recalled, was the creator of the Flight 93 Election essay about the 2016 election which may well have been one of the strong motivating factors for many voters as it painted a grim, but realistic picture of what would happen if the unthinkable were to happen and we would fall under the malign rule of the most dishonest and corrupt person to ever run for President.

The review to which I refer, and which I cannot possibly recommend too highly, appeared in the Claremont Review of Books and was authored by Angelo M. Codevilla. 

While I will set out a few of the highlights of Dr. Codevilla’s review, along with a few of the passages he quotes from the book, I urge anyone who is experiencing the same anxiety about the upcoming election I am sure we are all feeling to read the entire review and then order the book as it is, at this make-or-break time in the life of our Nation, “must reading.”

He makes clear that the “ruling class” will stop at nothing in its relentless drive to complete the total transformation (does that word ring a faint little bell in your memory?) of the Republic:

In his new book, The Stakes: America at the Point of No Return, Anton, now a lecturer and research fellow at Hillsdale College, again urges Americans to vote for Trump, disappointed though they may be with his performance, because they know even better than before how much this country’s ruling class would use control of the presidency to hurt us in our private and public lives for having dared to reject their mastery. Trump, imperfect as he is, is like a finger in a dike that, if removed, would loose a deluge. Anton describes how the Democratic Party-led complex of public-private power has been transforming our free, decent, and prosperous country into its opposite—and how it’s going to do to the rest of America what it has already largely accomplished in California. In the book’s final chapters, he lays out several paths that the current struggle for America’s future might take.

Anton’s commentary on the 2020 election does not belabor the obvious: it is a binary choice. The unprecedented level of opposition President Trump has faced explains, but does not excuse, some of his shortcomings. As Anton puts it: “[t]here’s little wrong with President Trump that more Trump couldn’t solve.” Then he adds what is really radically new about the 2020 election: should the Democrats win, the ruling Left—which includes just about everyone who controls American government and society’s commanding heights—is ready, willing, and eager to implement plans that would make it virtually impossible for conservatives ever to win national elections again. These plans include the importation and counting of non-citizen voters. Elections-by-mail would shift power from voters to those who count the votes, just like in Venezuela. Though reelecting Trump makes the republic’s survival possible, and preserves all manner of good options, it guarantees nothing. Trump’s defeat guarantees disaster—like in 2016, only much more so.

Observing that the ruling class, beginning in the 1930s, started pushing aside the Constitution, he quotes the following from the book as to where the real power now exists in America:

The real power…resides not with elected (or appointed) officials and “world leaders”; they—or most of them—are a servant class. The real power resides with their donors, the bankers, CEOs, financiers, and tech oligarchs—some of whom occasionally run for and win office, but most of whom, most of the time, are content to buy off those who do. The end result is the same either way: economic globalism and financialization, consolidation of power in an ostensibly “meritocratic” but actually semi-hereditary class, livened up by social libertinism.

After a fascinating passage the reviewer calls a “CT scan of the ruling class and its entourage”, he moves to a discussion of the source of the hubris of the ruling class:

They do not believe they have to worry about controlling their own violent troops because they are sure that they have nothing to fear from conservatives. That is because conservatives have continued to believe that the United States’s institutions and those who run them retain legitimacy. Conservative complaisance made possible a half-century of Progressive rule’s abuse. The War on Poverty ended up enriching its managers while expanding the underclass that voted for them. The civil rights movement ended up entitling a class of diversity managers to promote their friends and ruin their opponents. The environmental movement ended up empowering the very same wealthy, powerful folks while squeezing the rest of America into cookie cutter living and paying inflated energy prices. The feminist movement delivered divorce and abortion—far from benefiting women, it has made millions dependent on ruling class favor. The COVID-19 pandemic has had almost nothing to do with public health and almost everything to do with separating, impoverishing, and disconnecting people inclined to vote against the ruling class. As leftist judges rule, conservatives respond by appointing judges who pledge not to rule. As leftist governors establish their brand of effective sovereignty by decree, conservative ones obey court orders. So long as, and to the degree that, the illusion of legitimacy stands—so long as the Right obeys while the Left disobeys and commands—there is no end to what the Left can do because there is so little that conservatives do to fight back.

Then comes the truly chilling part, although I am sure it is not exactly new to many who have kept up with the grotesque machinations of the Democrats with riots, killings, burnings, mail ballots, and, as Lee Smith has entitled his new book, “The Permanent Coup”, it is still frightening to read such a graphic description of what is very likely coming our way starting on the morning of November 4:

600 lawyers to litigate the outcome, possibly in every state. No particular outcome of such litigations is needed to set off a systemic crisis. The existence of the litigations themselves is enough for one or more blue state governors to refuse to certify that state’s electors to the Electoral College, so as to prevent the college from recording a majority of votes for the winner. In case no winner could be confirmed by January’s Inauguration Day, the 20th Amendment provides that Congress would elect the next president. Who doubts that, were Donald Trump the apparent winner, and were Congress in Democratic hands, that this would be likelier than not to happen?

Before or afterward, were conservatives not unanimously to roll over, and were a few incidents to result in loss of life and conflict between police forces on opposite sides of the affairs, America might well experience an explosion of pent-up rage less like the American Civil War of the 19th century and more like the horror that bled Spain in the 20th.

Or, as a friend asked in a recent Letter to the Editor — “How does President Pelosi sound to you?”

I recently wrote a post about the frustration of trying to communicate with our elected representatives in Congress. In that regard, and because I feel there is a critical need –I see it as the most critical need in my lifetime — to do everything we can as citizens to help re-elect the President, I would be very pleased to receive any suggestions as to what we can do in that effort, other than send money (I’ve done that) or try to get some response from our Representatives or Senators (I’ve given up on that). 

The barbarians are no longer at the gate- the images on your evening news will quickly disabuse you of that notion. 

God Bless America, Jim.