Summary: Not all social revolutions are violent or fast. Revolutionaries on the Left are building a new America on the ruins of the America-that-once-was. Our passivity is their most powerful advantage.
I have written hundreds of posts about ways to reform America. Meanwhile, the Left has begun a revolution – and it gathers force and momentum every day. Becoming more radical year by year, despite having little public support. We are stampeded like a flock of sheep. Perhaps because we have become sheep.
Think of America ten years ago. Transgendered rights – and the massive panoply of changes to society they demand – were unknown to the vast majority of the public. Throwing the borders open (with welfare for migrants) was considered imprudent or bizarre. Now both are major programs at all levels of government. But until recently neither has been a major subject in political campaigns. Until recently, neither was the subject of much legislative action. Both have been pushed by the Left using their influence on the courts and government agencies – using their massively powerful non-profit organizations, plus support by journalists and academics.
This has been the way of America for several generations. Long ago the public lost control of our evolution.
About revolutions
Revolutions often become more radical as they evolve. The French and Russian revolutions were at first simple reform movements. They became attempts to uproot their cultures and replace them with dreams (that became nightmares). That too has been America’s history since the 1960s. We are just in the transitional stage.
The Civil Rights Movement became Black Power.
The Civil Rights movement in America was in many ways conservative, run by reformers and Christian ministers (e.g., Roy Wilkins and MLK Jr.). A new generation of African-Americans replaced them in the late 1960s – with more revolutionary goals. Bobby Seale and Huey Newton were co-founders of the Black Panther Party. In his 1970 book, Seize the Time: The Story of the Black Panther Party and Huey P. Newton, Seale describes how his partner changed the civil rights movement at its moment of triumph into something more suitable for a revolution.
“Huey wanted brothers off the block – brothers who had been out there robbing banks, brothers who had been pimping, brothers who had been peddling dope, …brothers who had been fighting the pigs.”
That has been a recurring pattern since then, as seen in the evolution of the Black Lives Matter movement from its focus on police brutality on innocent Black men to the defense of criminals whose mothers might be glad they are gone.
The transition from Civil Rights to Black Power was announced with a name change. This was a marketing error not to be repeated by the Left.
The four waves of feminism.
The first three waves of feminism were the quest for equal rights. The Fourth Wave seeks supremacy but marches under the same flag. This causes confusion in those not paying close attention, who do not realize that the name is the same but the goals have changed.
Radical feminists seek to make women’s testimony beyond challenge (as Sander’s has learned, despite his impeccable Leftist credentials), make marriage a one-sided deal imprudent for men to enter, and make discrimination against men in education and employment national policy. Opposing these is condemned as “oppression of women” and sexism.
Fourth-wave feminists are open about their goals, with campaigns that would be considered gross sexism if the genders were reversed (which was a test for sexism in the second- and third-wave feminism). Such as “the future is female” campaigns. Obama’s proud claim that “women are better then men.” A host of articles and books proclaim the superiority of women and inferiority (or evil) of men. Op-eds in major newspapers urge men to let women rule (e.g., here and here). Even polite conversation among equals becomes “harassment” to fourth-wave feminists (only abject deference by men suffices), as seen in these radical feminists’ reactions to the proposal scenes in Pride And Prejudice.
New revolutions.
Now the Left is making even more profound changes in American society. Open borders combined with multiculturalism (and less assimilation) will over time drastically reshape our culture. The multitude of changes brought by the LGBTQ movement will have equally or even larger effects.
The 2020 election has begun to bring these issues into public discussion. But despite their importance, the candidates and journalists will keep them on the margins, in the shadows. Will the results, either way, slow the progress of these revolutions? Their institutional support lies beyond the reach of elections, and elected officials have no interest in these issues.
Where are the conservatives?
Conservatives are locked up in the Republican Party. Their leaders are servants of the 1% and the plutocracy. Their priorities are tax cuts for the rich, big defense spending, facilitating growth of cartels and monopolies, breaking unions, and deregulation of corporations – all the things Team Trump put at the top of their To Do list. The Left’s social revolutions are of no interest to them, except as fodder for speeches.
But sometimes good things come to an end. Trump broke ranks with his fellow US elites and acted to slow immigration. The other cultural changes being done by the Left are of little interest to him.
Summary
For a decade, the Left has been changing America using the power of the courts, news media, and government agencies. Without public consent through elections, even without broad public support. All they needed were networks of true believers, lavish funding, intelligent planning (an open-source movement), time – and a deeply passive American public.
Are any of those things likely to change in the foreseeable future? If not, the revolution will continue.