The Counter-Revolution of the Misled, Misinformed, and Misbehaving

Third & Final Part:

To understand where we are in the Reagan Revolution we might find it helpful to look to the French Revolution for our  model of Hegel's dialectic at work within the context of history.  That revolution came about as the result of the convergence of many causes, not the least of which were the hunger, deprivation, and oppression of the proletariat while the bourgeoisie lived lives of indulgence and excess. 

But what followed, the Antithesis, was bloody awful and not without certain parallels to present day America.

That which followed the revolution in France is known as la Terreur (The Age of Terror) as conflict between rival political factions and real and imagined internal and external conspiracies helped empower Robespierre, history's poster boy of Gresham's law of political morality: The bad drives out the good as everyone becomes corrupted while political life becomes like the Hobbseian war of all against all...

During this darkly sanguine period of French history the guillotine became known as the "national razor".

Now, let me quickly guide you through what I see as our "antithesis" to the Reagan Revolution.  Bad driving out good?  Well, I suggest that Enron, AIG, Lehman Brothers, the home finance debacle, General Motors could all be representative of the first leg of Gresham's law; everyone becomes corrupted.

Here, though, is what really concerns me and what goes beyond the almost predictable venality which underlies the monetarist philosophies of the Reagan Revolution---the antithesis, the bloody period of mob-rule,

Consider action/adventure TV-star, Chuck Norris, calling on the military to disobey the President's orders while avowing that there are thousands of  "cells" across America ready to rise up to resist Obama and to fight for a "return to the constitution" and that he will serve as President of Texas after the constitution is restored.

Consider the various components of an ultra-secret vigilante group of active and former members of the military calling its self "The Oath Keepers" who assert they took an oath to defend the Constitution and it is therefore their responsibility to resist "unconstitutional" orders from President Obama, who "ain't really president because he ain't got no real birth certificate and cain't be a real Amuhrican".

These people are armed to the teeth, know how to use those weapons, and because they are as crazy acting as a run over snake, should be consider extremely dangerous.

Consider Glenn Beck, Bill Reilly, Lou Dobbs, Sean Hannity and that stringy, bleached-blond, meat-market sleep-around, bat from hell, Ann Coulter.  Consider Lindsey Graham, John Cornyn, Jim Bunning, Mitch McConnell, Louis Gohmert, Jeb Hensarling, and John Boehner.  Don't know these names?  Learn them and you'll find proof of the second leg of Gresham's law: war of all against all.

If we are, as I believe we are, in the early stages of a Hegelian period of antithesis following a revolution, I fear we are in for dismally dark and dangerous times.