We Must Win The Battle Against 'The United States of Passivity'

The left’s most powerful weapon is using psy-ops to demoralize conservatives. We must be happy warriors to win.

American Thinker 

What did Russia, China, the Roman Republic, the Weimar Republic, Cambodia, and Iran all have in common? The answer to this question is vitally important to all of us, as the same conditions that led to these societies’ original fall are starkly in evidence here today. The common denominator is that the governments did not take the threats against them seriously enough.

Let me walk you through how I got here:

Many Americans are on tenterhooks, unsure what to do or whom to believe, as they see Democrat agitation play out across the country.

Someone wrote to me, “I see this country coming apart. Look at California, Portland (Oregon), Seattle, Minnesota, Illinois, NYC, Maine, and even my state (Virginia). The Democrats and the mainstream media are working as a team to destroy this nation, and there’s no effective pushback. As a result, I’m tense and despondent.”

I am less despondent because I separate wheat from chaff when I read the news. What helped is that, in last week’s American Thinker “Member Weekly Newsletter” (available only to subscribers), J.R. Dunn wrote that much of the left acts like “revolutionary cosplayers.”

I had to look that up. It turns out that phrase refers to the practice of dressing up as a fictional character—usually from anime, video games, comics, movies, or TV—and then performing or embodying that character’s personality. It’s both a creative hobby and a social subculture, with events, competitions, and communities built around it.

The fact that “crazies”—and they are actually quite small in number—seem willing to confront and impede armed federal officers is because they confuse reality with a fantasy game, believing that there is no risk of any real danger or cost, much like an online fantasy game. Recent events in Minnesota have proved them wrong. 

But rather than take away the lesson that life is not a game, Democrats are attempting to assure these people that it’s not them, but the ICE, Border Patrol agents, and Donald Trump that are out of control and must be reined in. As I was writing this, a judge in Minnesota denied Minnesota’s request for a temporary restraining order or preliminary injunction to stop the ICE surge; unfortunately, they’ll be back again, that’s how the opposition rolls.

While the leftist activists risking death are completely out of touch with reality, the establishment leftists orchestrating this madness have a firm grip on what’s happening: Their goal is to use those whom Lenin termed “useful idiots” to destabilize the system and demoralize law-abiding normal people—and they think that they’ve got Trump between a rock and a hard place, because he’s afraid to act less he escalate the violence that normal Americans hate so much.

And this brings us back to those countries that were brought down, enslaved, or whose societies were obliterated by the machinations of a minority of internal subversives.

Internal takeovers tend to occur when:

• The population is politically passive or exhausted. Often, after war, extended economic collapse or malaise, famine, or long authoritarian rule.
• State institutions lose legitimacy or capacity. Courts, legislatures, and bureaucracies stop functioning or lose public trust.
• A disciplined minority faction remains organized—military, party, militia, or ideological movement with cohesion and a plan.

When those align, as is happening at present, a small internal group can overpower a much larger but demobilized society.

In America, one more salient variable needs to be in play. In that same newsletter, Andrea Widburg wrote that the role of leftist judges is finally coming into focus, especially because judges have lost the internal constraints that once kept them relatively honest:

What used to constrain leftist judges was the humiliation of being overturned on appeal. However, as we’re seeing, that’s no longer the case. They just don’t care anymore. To the extent that they are status-conscious, their status is no longer tied to an impeccable appellate record. Instead, it’s being part of “the Resistance.” If they can hamstring the Trump administration or Trump himself, they’ve won — and that’s true regardless of eventually being overturned on appeal.

Leftist judges wear judges’ cloaks, while they are really politicians who have the innate and almost imperial ability to gum up the works with their decisions, even when some of those decisions are overturned on appeal. Leftist judges today are just another resistance arm of the anti-Trump, anti-conservative wing, but with the distinction that they get to call balls and strikes, while claiming the moral high ground. God help us all survive these self-righteous provocateurs.

If we are to survive this radical minority’s onslaught, a few things need to happen, and it starts with us:

We conservatives need to vote. The best guesstimate is that fewer than 20% of those New Yorkers who could vote did vote in the last mayoral election. The rest did nothing, leading to a communist in Gracie Mansion.

In Seattle, where the new mayor, Katie Wilson, is just as hard-left as Mamdani, only less telegenic, the same is true. ChatGPT estimates that Seattle has around 590,000 residents who are eligible to vote. In the last election, Katie received 138,931 votes. In other words, she’s yanking the city from left-leaning into Marxism with only 23% of the people behind her.

Our intra-party fights need to take place during the primaries—and we need to aim for strong, pro-MAGA, constitutional conservatives to win. Once the primaries are over, the only thing we can do is vote Republican, and that’s true even if we don’t like the Republican candidate. The Democrat candidate will always be worse.

We need to push Congress to enact legislation restraining appellate and district court federal judges. They’re out of control.

We need to keep the faith and be happy warriors, like Donald Trump (and Ronald Reagan). That’s how you win the long war.

For my reader in Virginia, and for the many Republicans and conservatives who believe we have already lost that long war, take heart. It’s not so. We are not destined to fall into the same trap as those other countries, because we have two advantages in this fight:

• We have the most magnificent Constitution ever written, still widely supported, revered, and relevant to the majority of Americans today.
• We have the benefit of knowing our history and of having some very dedicated and serious individuals who already know what I’m telling you and are determined not to let us go over that cliff, whatever it takes to stop it.

The battle ahead will be hard, but it’s not complicated. Stay true to your values, don’t hide those values (but remember that normal people are moved more by persuasion than verbal abuse), don’t give up hope, and vote.

God Bless America!