“Was to haul your picture down off the wall near the cage where I used to work

“Was I a fool or not to try to protect your real identity?

“You looked a little burned out, my friend, I thought it might be up to me”

— Bob Dylan, Up to Me

1. We admitted we were powerless over Trump–that our blogging had become unmanageable.

2. Came to believe that a Trump greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity.

3. Made a decision to turn our will and our lives over to the care of Trump as we understood Him.

4. Made a searching and fearless moral inventory of our archives on Trump.

5. Admitted to Trump, to ourselves, and to another human being the exact nature of our crimethink.

6. Were entirely ready to have Trump remove all these defective blogging posts.

7. Humbly asked Trump to remove our bloggings about Trump, aka evil Satan, proto-Hitler, serial-liar, blathering buffon, smasher of little old lady and little old man homesteads on the blasted heaths of Scotland and somewhere else in American (that rat bastard!) and all around Anti-Christ if we believed in Christ as the anti-Anti-Christ in the first place.

8. Made a list of all Trumpers we had harmed and alienated, and became willing to restore their previously trolling and just plain wrong comments to the blog.

But I keep coming here. I’ve got children and grandchildren and have to try to understand what’s happening even if I despair of changing it. There are other sane people here. And blessed Neo keeps giving us posts about ballet and music and poetry and jello (though not in a while – what’s up with that, Neo?) to comfort us with the reminder that politics is not and never will be all there is that matters.

I do like the suggestions of other commenters, like Sharon W. amd Blert to carry on with personal activism and deprogramming. That is something we can do on a micro level. And I am trying to carry on in my way, by focusing on my writing … my current and most recent books (The Chronicles of Luna City – which isn’t space opera but a small South Texas town) might be seen as light diversions, but I do slip in (subtly, I hope!)certain messages about responsibility, community, and family. Small seeds, mighty oaks, et cetera.

The man saw clearly, what most cannot bear to accept.

A conservatist activist movement whose focus is the prevention of the republic’s collapse is doomed to failure. It is doomed to failure because it cannot acquire the needed political leverage, proven by the Presidential elections of 2008, 2012 and now with the ‘choice’ of either Hillary Clinton or Donald Trump. And further confirmed by Obama’s current 53% approval rating. These are today’s handwriting on the wall.

Any conservative activist movement that seeks prevention will fail because it’s activism rests upon rational arguments to gain adherents and the political ideas that have long dominated the public’s mind reject rationality in favor of ‘magical thinking’.

Whereas, a conservatist activist movement that seeks to build a consensus, as preparation to enable its members to survive the coming collapse and, positions itself to use its organization, as political leverage, so as to dominate the society that emerges from that collapse, may have a chance of succeeding.

Once the dust clears, we may be able to build a new republic but we cannot save what the majority of American’s have abandoned.