I remember talking to a childhood friend a little before the 2016 election.  What he said to me sticks in my memory verbatim because it was so stunning.

"If Trump wins this election, it will be the end of democracy."

He said this without irony.  To him, democracy meant something other than a president being elected through the free choice of millions of ordinary voters.  To him, "democracy" meant "the cause," the ideology of the left in all of its romantically dishonest Marxist overtones — which the wretched public was about to mess up.  "Democracy," in other words, could not be left to the people.  It was the proper province of the enlightened and sophisticated few.

It is not about the subtleties of how the Electoral College does or ought to function.  It is not about the distinction between direct democracy and the representative democracy that was designed into our now defunct republic.  It is about the core beliefs of human beings.  About the distinction between a government that exists at the sufferance of the people, on the one hand, and a people who exist at the sufferance of a political class on the other.  There are currently only a minority of officeholders in this country who actually believe that ordinary people ought to have as much sovereignty over their own lives as the need for social order will allow.  They believe this either because they have a certain faith in the people's collective wisdom, or because they simply understand that putting too much power into anyone else's hands has tended not to end well.  Everyone else, Republican or Democrat, fake conservative or real Marxist, believe, at best, that people are mere children who have to be protected from themselves.  At worst, they believe that the people are an inferior species of animal — a herd that might be thinned or fattened up as necessary to serve the interests of their betters.  We have ample cause to think the majority of our federal legislators and even more of the noxious pampered creatures that make up the administrative state fall easily into this second category.  The last thing that such people would want is an honest election — ever.

The people who are currently in charge will cheat in the upcoming election.  There can be no reasonable doubt about this.  The question isn't one of if — it's only how.  It is a question of whether or not they'll be successful, or whether or not enough people of our side will show they have the functional remnants of a backbone.  Whatever shakes out after the circus of mail-in ballots, ballot-harvesting, and all the other tricks we've come to expect — we must remember that the leadership of the Democrat party does not believe in elections even in principle.  They will not consider any manipulation of the electoral process to be cheating.  In their view, they're entitled to win.  If I eat a piece of steak, I do not moralize at all about the unfair slaughter of the beast that it was taken out of.  Our political rights, in the eyes of most of the political class, are something on the order of civil rights of cattle.  This is to say — they are rights they don't believe exist.

Now, it naturally follows from this situation that we need to stop expecting a fair win just as we no longer believe in the Easter Bunny or Santa Claus.  Our victories are going to be denied; litigated; and, if at all possible, overturned.  We cannot pretend we are arguing with honorable opponents.  In the defense of their own power, our enemies will leave no options off the table.  Our lives mean little to them.  They hate us.  They have made this amply clear.  For the sake of our nation's future, we need to shrug off any worn out notion that we have any kind of moral duty to our rulers simply because they are our rulers.

I used to hear people drone on that they didn't respect the president or senator so-and-so — but they had a duty to respect the office.  Why?  The office of president is currently held by a mumbling imbecile who was really no great shakes when his marble collection was intact, and now makes Hillary Clinton seem like a master of modern statecraft.  We don't really know exactly who the organ grinder is that owns this monkey, but we know that the slobbering creature himself isn't fit to be a substitute assistant manager at McDonald's.  I don't recall any of the rabid mob across the aisle or on the corporate news ever saying anything even close to "I don't like Trump, but I need to show respect for the office that he holds."  Perhaps I missed that nanosecond of civility as it flashed across Chris Cuomo's smug and privileged face.

We owe our enemies no consideration whatsoever.  None.  They are not merely the misguided members of our less than perfect national family anymore.  They are as alien to us as anybody could be.  Just consider some of the policies the Democrats have shown themselves quite willing to defend.  Which party was it that brought us degenerate young men on women's athletic teams, or genital removal surgery for toddlers?  What nation in the history of Earth has concluded that the elimination of its own borders was a swell idea, or that subordinating our laws to the whims of unelected foreigners was the height of postmodern chic?  Do you like the wholesale dismantling of your culture as seen every night on television — both in the programming and in the commercials?  How about the war on the economy?  Is that a price you are willing or even able to pay — so that the idiotic "thought leaders" can feel good about themselves?  Did you vote to give up your individual freedom to the WEF?  Do you think Klaus Schwab and Co. consider you anything more than a laboratory animal to be disposed of at the end of their experiment?  It is no longer even tenable to hold onto the least hope that they might somehow, miraculously learn to care.  They have declared themselves our enemies in innumerable polices and in quite explicit language.  It is time we take them at their word.

I am tired of "let's tone down the language" and "let's turn the other cheek."  We have turned the other cheek and gotten it bloodied and bloodied again.  It is good to pray for even the most evil if you can find it in your heart to do so — but there is no virtue whatsoever in entrusting them with anybody's children.  It does little good for the livestock to appeal to the conscience of the butcher.  The butcher does not have one.

I hope the election goes well — but we need to be prepared, as a people born into freedom, to rise in civil disobedience whenever our rights are overthrown.  We need to be prepared to follow the example of the French Yellow Vests, the Canadian Truckers, and the Dutch Farmers.  We need to have the guts to make an ugly, resolute, and inconvenient nuisance of ourselves.  We are Americans.  We have the constitutional rights to assemble and to protest — whether those rights are currently acknowledged by the authorities or not.  We need to accept that we will never restore our freedom sitting in our chairs and waiting for next time.  At the very least, if you can do nothing else, you can still rattle your congressional representative's phone.  If you have feet to stand on, you should be ready and willing to stand in the way of those who despise you and stop the madness they're fomenting.  If we do not stand together now, we'll be divided and eliminated individually, one by one.

Image via Max Pixel.