Legal Insurrection website is 13 years old today. The Legal Insurrection Foundation is not quite 3 years old. My first post was on October 12, 2008, Obama is “Door No. 2″. Each year I write an anniversary post, you can read them to see the ebb and flow of opitimism and pessimism.
This year the theme is collapse. Of the structures that hold our country together.
There are many variations on the theme that collapse happens gradually, then suddenly.
For the first decade of Legal Insurrection, we documented and did our best to oppose the “gradually” phase of societal collapse, what in 2017 on our 9th anniversary I described as the continuing loss of institutions:
Imagine living in a repressive country in which the government blocked access to and suppressed internet content. You don’t need to move. It’s coming here but from private industry. This is, in many ways, more dangerous than government suppression of free speech because at least in the U.S. the government is subject to the First Amendment, and can be voted out of office.I don’t know if there are any uncorrupted institutions left that matter. The education system, from public grade school through public and private higher ed, is gone. The frontal assault on free speech on campuses is the result. If you think this is just a Humanities and Social Sciences problem, stay tuned. In 3-5 years, if we’re still here, we’ll be writing about how the social justice warriors have corrupted the STEM fields. It’s happening now, it’s just not in the headlines yet.There is a rising tide of absolutism in ideas and enforcement of ideological uniformity that is palpable. I feel it in the air, even at Cornell which is far from the worst….Even language as a means of communication is corrupted, with terminology manipulated and coerced to achieve political ends. It started on campuses, and it’s moved into the AP stylebook and the mainstream.The press could stand as a bulwark against this slide, but it too is corrupted.
We are in the suddenly phase now.
All the “progressive” pieces were in place but needed a spark to burn down the house. That spark was the death of George Floyd in late May 2020.
What followed was state-sanctioned lawlessness, rioting, and looting; a vicious cultural purge from academia to corporations to the military to historical monuments; gaslighting and burying of news by a corrupt and dishonest mainstream corporate media and Big Tech; and the solidification of our post-truth world where we are required to state things we know to be untrue or with which we disagree in order to avoid social ostracization, where feelings matter more that facts, and where telling facts some people don’t like can get you fired, denounced, and boycotted.
We don’t have mean tweets anymore, instead we have a sociopathic federal government that wants to watch over almost every financial transaction we make and labels as domestic terrorists parents who raise objections to their kids being force-fed ideological poison at school. All the while destroying our borders, our energy independence, and the credibility of our military.
You cannot depend on the government of your personal safety, certainly not in large cities. When seconds count, the police are 1619 minutes away.
We’re in the collapse phase. You can feel it. There are no credible national institutions left. The medical field, the sciences, public health experts, on down the line are being gutted and losing legitimacy. The military is run at the top by woke clowns.
Higher Ed is gone, K-12 is the last cultural battlefield. That’s why the teachers unions, the education bureaucracy, and leftist billionaire funders are fighting so hard and so dirty. What better wake up call do you need than the fact that you have to worry about your kindergartener being ideologically manipulated at school by teachers and administrators?
Collapse is not irreversible, but it’s happening in real time. You can feel it.
The backlash is building. You can feel that too. It’s not a natural state of affairs for people to want to live under such tyranny. It can’t continue at this rapid pace. Something has to give.
But the backlash to the backlash will be to criminalize dissent and to intensify the cultural purge. We already see that the power of the state and corporations will be brought to bear.
As for me, I’m still Prepping for the Worst:
So all in all, I no longer view “preppers” as crazy. Maybe they were right, just early. Better early than late.I don’t plan to be late.I’m not going off the grid, but a back up plan is not a bad idea. Why do you think so many people are buying acreage in flyover country?I have so little faith in the people running this country at various levels that stocking up on long shelf-life food and other prepper-lite protections seems to me, for the first time in my adult life, to be one of the least crazy ideas.
Are you cheered up yet?
Since this is our anniversary, I probably should mention that we have a website and a Foundation, and we’re increasingly focused on being a support system for the purged, the almost-purged, and the soon to be purged. We can’t depend on institutions, so we need to depend on each other.
We do what we can with what we have, day in and day out. Sometimes with recognition, sometimes without. And on a ridiculously small budget.
The pressure is real. We face throttling on social media and search engines, and there’s also some deplatforming crap we’re facing behind the scenes, which will be revealed in due course.
Anyway, I thought I’d share this video of my speech to the Norfolk County (MA) Republican Committee on October 7, 2021. I talked about a lot of the things we’ve been doing, and the state of the nation.
(Full video with Q&A here)
Sorry if I rained on your parade. I probably should not write these anniversary posts after a day of traveling while sitting in a hotel room after midnight somewhere not far from some city in Michigan, getting ready for an appearance. I’m back to doing in-person appearances, next stop San Diego in early December. We’ll try to organize a reader get-together, details tba.
Legal Insurrection was started out of frustration. I never thought about the future when I took to Google Blogger, and certainly never thought I’d still be doing it 13 years later. Through Legal Insurrection I’ve made many great friends and met great people. It’s allowed me to stay (relatively) sane.
I extend my thanks to our great editors and authors who feed this website beast every day. And to the Foundation administrators, researchers, staff lawyers, and others who do so much to help us accomplish our mission. And to the readers, commenters (hah), and donors who keep us alive.
And of course, thanks to The Wife of 37 years, who didn’t seem terribly upset that I was leaving town for a bit.
[Featured Image: Mob Throws Statue of Hans Christian Heg, Abolitionist, Into Lake Monona, 2020]
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