THE NEW HAMPSHIRE CELEBRITY SPECTACULAR

   Every four years in the United States, Americans are treated to a media extravaganza which is marketed to an effete public as a national election. Despite all evidence to the contrary, the carefully-packaged and managed electoral coaches and their ethnically diverse and gender-neutral cheerleading squads promote the idea that everyone will benefit personally depending on the outcome of the performance. 

   The reality, of course, is quite different. Stripped of all of the showmanship and sales-pitches, the message is a choice between two factions: one of which promises to maintain the Status Quo, the other promising to keep the Status Quo but manage it better. Nobody outside of a few insiders actually gains anything by any of this nonsense, but Americans love national dramas and media circuses because they can pretend that they're really part of some bigger program and hold fast to the illusion that they really matter to the big decision-makers. 

   In New Hampshire yesterday---a state with a whopping 4 Electoral votes and responsible for one-half of one percent of our national economy---held its presidential primaries. The President-in-Exile eked out a 7-point win against a WEF Global Leader, while our nominal Head-of-State handily won a write-in vote. The Expert Class and their celebrity parrots in the Corporate Media interpret all of this as reflective of the national mood of the entire United States; because, obviously northern New England is a trend-setter encompassing all of the perspectives and interests of 350 million people.

   The Controlled Opposition naturally is spinning the primary as some kind of national mandate. We all saw how accurately their predictions and strategies worked in 2021, 2022, and 2023: but, never fear: it will work this time. Things have never been worse than under Biden---never mind that the Junta has done little more than govern according to precedents handed to them on a silver platter by GOP Congresses and Administrations. Vote for Trump---never mind that the RNC worked hand-in-glove with the Democrats to sabotage his whole agenda last time. Put the Republicans back in charge to rebuild our economy, military, and schools---never mind that nobody has the slightest plan for accomplishing any of these miraculous events. 

  The Democratic Party is fanatically obsessed with Abortion, alleged systemic racism, homo 'equality' along with a stiff input of weather-related hysteria. The Republicans have nothing to counter any of this except to say that such things are up to the States---sux to be you if you live in a Blue State. In fact, since the 1990s, the Neocons have written off social issues entirely. They say instead that we should focus on economic and national security issues, as if we don't already have enough top-down input. They're solutions to both building the economy, military, and educational systems has been to shift the management of these sectors from unelected government bureaucrats to unelected Corporate bureaucrats. Actually, the Neocons have made things even worse because by so-called privatization, they've stripped any legislative oversight from both how these systems are managed or how much they cost.

   This is hardly a winning strategy, as the last elections have shown. Most Americans figure they either can avoid, somewhat tolerate, or at least pretend to go along with the ludicrous excesses from the Whacko Left but what the Right is offering is solving problems with a sledgehammer. The Whacko Left might live in a world populated with unicorns and magic mushrooms, but most Americans can hold their noses and put with that when their alternative is a world filled with SWAT-teams, barbed wire, and having their livelihoods dependent on the cost-effective means of expanding the profit-margins of Wall Street's stakeholders. 

    If one really follows the Republican Party's current narratives: their lack of any solutions and general incoherence is underlain with a pervasive, unspoken agreement that their ultimate appeal is based on brute force. Their idea of Foreign Policy is to terrorize other nations into serving our interests. They think that Ukraine's treatment of Russians and Israel's treatment of Arabs are great models for dealing with immigration here. Their economic policy boils down to letting the strong survive and the weak perish. Their solutions to our systemic cultural rot is to suppress DEI programs and impose their own versions of them. Their idea of national security is to expand domestic espionage, the Prison-Industrial Complex, and inflation of the death penalty. 

   This is not how Conservatism traditionally worked. Conservatives only appealed to force as a last resort. Foreign Policy was actually closer to the one that China currently practices: win-win cooperation. Immigration was welcomed but based on what the country actually needed instead of delusions about representing diversity or the paranoia of xenophobes. They believed in an efficient social safety net and encouraged churches and private charities to participate. They fought radicalism with reasoned argument and appeals to the public to step up and take responsibility for how these institutions were run. They supported economic independence of the average worker. They used to be about guaranteeing Constitutional Rights as their top priority.

  But that was then, this is now. The Republican leadership is totally clueless on this point. The Conservative Movement doesn't exist. Their whole operating procedure is redefining what a Conservative is, and then building and selling a narrative around that illusion. Don't buy into the narrative. Force and fear are the only thing that they're really selling, and the last thing that America needs is more of that.