As of the November elections, the nation is at war.  It’s a 21^st-century war, so it’s very different.  Because it’s new, the scope and magnitude aren’t easily understood.  It hasn’t been declared.  It may never be.  Hence, for many millions of Americans, perceptions are clouded or lagging.  In human affairs, with change, this often occurs.    

It’s the second American civil war, and its origins predate the November elections fraud, which seems on track to steal the presidency from the rightful winner, Donald J. Trump.  The genesis of this civil war is the ideo-cultural war that has waxed and waned across the nation since the late 1960s.  So, November’s election thievery might better be regarded as an outgrowth and escalation -- a potentially nation-shattering escalation – of that decades-old cultural conflict.  

We are in the initial phase of the new civil war.  Call it the phony war, which was also the “strangely quiet start to World War II.”  The Second World War went eight months without significant hostilities on the Western Front, months marked by puzzlement and hesitancy (see the “Confetti War,” which stemmed from the Phony War.) 

America’s first civil war had its phony phase of sorts, too.  Lincoln was elected on November 6, 1860.  Fort Sumter was attacked on April 12, 1861.  Over five months, tensions built, and then hostilities commenced. 

The parallels aren’t exact, of course.  But the phony phase of this new civil war is reminiscent.  One of the grievous errors made in warfare is fighting the current war like the last.  In this instance, it’s expecting that wars have orthodoxies, and if those orthodoxies aren’t present, then there isn’t war.  Understandings must change.             

What’s triggering the second American civil war?  Trump’s unexpected election in 2016, and his four highly successful years -- despite implacable opposition and attempted subversion by the Democrat-led axis -- and the prospect of a final Trump term, when the president would not only consolidate his achievements, but push new initiatives to break the corruption and imperiousness that infects the nation’s “elite” …these were the Rubicon.  Anti-liberty forces have long been marching through the nation’s institutions.  But this became a double-time as they grasped Trump’s primal threat to their fortunes, present and future. 

Liberty’s enemies have opted for brinkmanship to settle matters, once and for all.  They haven’t mustered armies to seize Washington, D.C. (would they have to anyway?) and occupy red states.  Give them credit.  They aim to achieve their coup without firing a shot.  Call it a velvet-gloved coup d’état.  Some are terming it a “Color Revolution.”  The war they’re waging to seize power is conspiratorial, innovative, multidimensional.  It relies on subterfuge, misinformation, misdirection, audacity, and a gamble: that while millions of patriots may now squawk and shake their fists, they will go no further… that when Biden is installed as president, and the cabal he fronts holds the levers of power, resistance will be futile, anyway.  Anger will give way to sullen resignation.       

Millions more Americans may acknowledge fraud as a factor in the elections, but to them, talk of an ongoing putsch is the stuff of a Tom Clancy novel.  For them, it strains credulity that fellow Americans would act with such malice to undermine the American system of government, thereby destroying our rights.  The conspirators are counting on these Americans’ disbelief as a counterweight and cover for their machinations.  Still, other millions of Americans -- attributable chiefly to their hatred of Trump and “progressive” orientation -- are aligned with the putsch.  For them, the ends justify the means. 

The conspirators are betting that Americans have grown too complacent and risk averse.  Confronting and defeating this unprecedented conspiracy entails too many sacrifices.  The radical transformation of the country and the tyranny of the Democrat-led axis will succeed because Americans are no longer willing to do what it takes to defeat liberty’s enemies. 

Wars are often the results of blunders and miscalculations.  The British Crown was needlessly high handed in dealing with aggrieved American colonists.  The South too lightly regarded Lincoln and underappreciated Northern resolve.  The Japanese surprise attack on Pearl Harbor was the spark that provoked American fury and led to the incineration of large swaths of the Japanese homeland.  Are anti-liberty insurrectionists making the same fundamental mistakes?    

Antiliberty forces -- Democrats, leftists, Big Tech barons, monied interests of all stripes, Deep State players, and other establishment elements (and lurking in Great Oz-like fashion, Xi Jinping) -- underestimate patriots.  They regard working- and middle-class Americans as inferiors -- rubes to be had.  Anti-liberty forces occupy many -- if not most -- of the power centers in the nation.  And, as stated, they’re pursuing a highly complex silent coup.  The war being waged is far too sophisticated and devious for patriots to ever figure out, much less counter effectively, they reason.                        

The enemy’s conceit is its Achilles heel.  As of January 20 and moving ahead -- if there’s a pretender president -- millions of patriots will remain defiantly unreconciled to consigning American liberty to history’s scrapheap.  Patriots are neither complacent nor fearful.  They’re confirmed in their dedication to the Republic and resolved to restore it to its fullest measure.  Patriots will not surrender to tyrants what God granted as a birthright.  They appreciate that life without liberty is base existence. 

The culture war was instigated and pursued by the left.  Over fifty long years, patriots have defended traditional culture, but sought peace with accommodation.  America is big enough for different worldviews, went the thinking.  But the left has never wanted peaceful coexistence; it has wanted rule. 

But the new civil war isn’t just about cultural dominance.  It’s very much about greater power acquisition for elites and their subsets.  The elites wish to obliterate America as founded because they covet tyranny (in whatever modern manifestation) as a means of perpetuating their advantages.  Their impulses are as old as the human species.             

The betting is that liberty’s enemies have misjudged patriots.  Today, this generation is being called, and the call will be answered.  The enemy will marvel -- as other enemies have wondered before -- as patriots fight with resolve for freedom. 

Liberty is nonnegotiable, and patriots vow unabashedly: Sic Semper Tyrannis. 

America isn’t its real estate.  It’s unique in human history, in that it’s an idea and ideal, the product of timeless principles and enduring values.  America as conceived in liberty is what the fight is for.    

Don’t let this phony war fool you.  The present is deceptive.  The cabal that failing and corrupt Joe Biden fronts knows that if it succeeds in installing Biden, it will have 48 months to cement its hold not just on presidential elections, but elections down ballot.  48 months to scuttle Trump’s achievements and impose its own radical, antiliberty polices and edicts, thereby forever changing the United States.  If successful, the Constitution won’t be worth the parchment it’s written on.  And if Trump returns to the White House?  War it will still be. 

We’ve entered momentous and perilous times, comparable to the four years of the Civil War and the eight years of the Revolution.  How this war evolves is unknowable.  Wars tend to have lives of their own.  No patriot should assume a favorable outcome.  The days ahead must be hard fought, for victory must be hard won.  It’s simply the price of freedom.     

J. Robert Smith can be found on Twitter @JRobertSmith1and Parler @JRobertSmith.  He also blogs at Flyover.                  

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