“Those who make peaceful revolution impossible,” President John F. Kennedy said in a 1962 speech, “will make violent revolution inevitable.”

Nearly 60 years later, two warring groups within the American political class seem resolutely determined to make “peaceful revolution” — by which JFK seems to have meant orderly democratic decision-making — impossible.

Supporters of Donald Trump rejected the outcome of the 2020 presidential election and, with his active if  deniably worded encouragement, rioted in a tantrum intended to overturn that election’s results.

Trump’s opponents immediately and predictably responded with calls for a reign of terror to suppress “sedition.” US Representative Bennie Thompson (D-MS) asked the Transportation Security Administration and the Federal Bureau of Investigation to add Trump supporters who have yet to be convicted of (or, in many cases, even charged with) any crime to the unconstitutional “no-fly list.” Newly elected US Representative Cori Bush (D-MO) filed a resolution calling for the expulsion from Congress of members who objected (as House rules allow) to certification of the election results.

Big Tech promptly swung into action in support of the latter side. The two largest social media platforms, Twitter and Facebook, banned Team Trump’s major voices and vowed to block or delete posts that call Team Pelosi’s line into question. Google, Apple, and Amazon colluded to take another social media platform, Parler, offline with the obvious purpose of denying Team Trump’s supporters any venue for expressing wrongthink.

If you’re looking for good guys, you won’t find them on either side of this fight. It’s a fight between two factions of the political class, with Big Tech trying to appease and co-opt one of those two factions. It’s neither a revolution nor a fight for freedom. It’s just a schoolyard brawl over which gang gets to rule. The interests of ordinary Americans aren’t represented.

But ordinary Americans do seem to be rallying in great numbers  to one side or the other. Whoever said “there’s a sucker born every minute” was low-balling it. The political class is well practiced at duping most of us into thinking we have skin in their power games.

That’s a big problem. Peaceful revolution, which would require an orderly dissolution, or at least devolution, of the US government, isn’t on the table. Neither major political class gang is willing to allow it on the table, because it would deprive them of power.

Fortunately, you can’t fool all of the people all of the time. Sooner or later, sufficient numbers will wise up, rise up, and put an end to this nonsense.

The Trump base, as personified by the DC rioters, is hardly an unstoppable force. But neither are its opponents an immovable object. The fates of Louis XVI, Nicholas II, and Nicolae Ceausescu are the alternative to peaceful revolution.

This dust-up is only one front in a larger war: A war by both gangs upon the rest of us. A war for power. A war for control. Neither gang will ultimately win that war. Their choice is whether to lose peaceably or violently.

Thomas L. Knapp (Twitter: @thomaslknapp) is director and senior news analyst at the William Lloyd Garrison Center for Libertarian Advocacy Journalism (thegarrisoncenter.org). He lives and works in north central Florida.

PUBLICATION/CITATION HISTORY

• “The Political Class: At War with Each Other and on the Rest of Us,” by Thomas L. Knapp, OpEdNews, 01/13/21
• “Political class at war with each other, us,” by Thomas L. Knapp, Spring Hope, North Carolina Enterprise, 01/14/21
• “Political class at war with each other, us,” by Thomas L. Knapp, Wilson, North Carolina Times, 01/14/21
• “The Political Class: At War with Each Other and on the Rest of Us,” by Thomas L. Knapp, Ventura County, California Citizens Journal, 01/15/21
• “The Political Class: At War with Each Other and on the Rest of Us,” by Thomas L. Knapp, CounterPunch, 01/15/21
• “There are no good guys on either side of this fight,” by Thomas L. Knapp, Kingsport, Tennessee, Times News [web and print], 02/18/21
• “The Political Class: At war with each other and on the rest of us,” by Thomas L. Knapp, New Rockford, North Dakota Transcript, 01/18/21
• “Political class is at war with each other — and us,” by Thomas L. Knapp, Fredericksburg, Virginia Free Lance-Star [web and print], 01/19/21
• “Political Class at War With Each Other,” by Thomas L. Knapp, Forest Hills/ Rego Park, New York Times [web and print], 01/19/21
• “Political Class at War With Each Other,” by Thomas L. Knapp, Queens, New York Examiner [web and print], 01/19/21
• “Political Class at War With Each Other,” by Thomas L. Knapp, Brooklyn, New York Downtown Star [web and print], 01/19/21
• “Political Class at War With Each Other,” by Thomas L. Knapp, Queens, New York Ledger [web and print], 01/19/21
• “Political Class at War With Each Other,” by Thomas L. Knapp, Glendale, New York Register [web and print], 01/19/21
• “Political Class at War With Each Other,” by Thomas L. Knapp, Long Island City / Astoria, New York Journal [web and print], 01/19/21
• “The political class is at war with each other and with the rest of us,” by Thomas L. Knapp, Sterling Heights, Michigan News-Herald, 01/26/21

On January 7, the day after rioters entered the US Capitol and put hundreds of politicians to flight in support of Donald Trump’s wild-eyed election fraud claims, Wisconsins’s State Assembly passed a resolution. The money line: “[P]olitical violence in any form has no place in the American system of government and should never be tolerated.”

If the Assembly (and other government bodies passing such resolutions) had followed up by dissolving themselves and sending their members home for good, I might believe they mean what they’re saying. Otherwise, no dice.

Political violence, and credible threats of political violence, are the very basis of “the American system of government.”

When the Assembly (or Congress, or your city council) passes a law or an ordinance, they’re not asking, they’re telling.  If you’re discovered not doing what they order you to do, or doing what they order you not to do, armed government employees will abduct you and put you in a cage. If you resist, those armed government employees will assault you, maybe even kill you.

Absent political violence and the credible threat thereof, government agencies would just be benevolent clubs making recommendations — recommendations we’d be free to accept or reject without threats of force either way.

Is all political violence bad? Well, no. Laws against the INITIATION of force — assault, murder, robbery, etc. — are defensive in nature, and if their enforcement was financed voluntarily rather than through taxation (under penalty of force for not coughing up), those laws would be entirely justifiable.

Needless to say, the Wisconsin State Assembly doesn’t limit itself to passing such laws. When it passes something like  2019 Assembly Bill 132 (“Persons under the age of 16 years may not operate a class 3 electric bicycle,” etc.), it’s threatening the use of violence against people who have not themselves engaged in violence.

The Capitol riot was unjustified because the claims used to incite it were nonsense. Congress does a lot of things that SHOULD get its members chased out of town by angry mobs. Counting votes that the rioters didn’t want counted was not a worthy casus belli.

Our rulers aren’t really opposed to political violence on grounds of justifiability, though. They’re only opposed to political violence when it’s used against them rather than by or for them. They’re the lords. We’re the peasants. While they won’t say that openly and proudly, they don’t want us to forget it even for a moment.

Thomas L. Knapp (Twitter: @thomaslknapp) is director and senior news analyst at the William Lloyd Garrison Center for Libertarian Advocacy Journalism (thegarrisoncenter.org). He lives and works in north central Florida.

PUBLICATION/CITATION HISTORY

• “Political Violence: The Politicians Doth Protest Too Much,” by Thomas L. Knapp, OpEdNews, 01/10/21
• “Political Violence: The Politicians Doth Protest Too Much,” by Thomas L. Knapp, Ventura County, California Citizens Journal, 01/11/21
• “Political violence: The politicians doth protest too much,” by Thomas L. Knapp, Hopkinsville, Kentucky New Era, 01/12/21
• “On political violence, the politicians doth protest too much,” by Thomas L. Knapp, Richmond, North Carolina Observer, 01/13/21
• “Political violence: The politicians doth protest too much,” by Thomas L. Knapp, Batesville, Mississippi Panolian, 01/13/21
• “Political Violence: The Politicians Doth Protest Too Much (erroneously headlined ” Yes, Fauci, you do need some humility”), by Thomas L. Knapp, Madill, Oklahoma Record, 01/13/21

In a sign that 2021 may get even more darkly weird than 2020, a mob of Trump supporters pushed their way into the US Capitol on January 6, putting politicians to flight and delaying, for a few hours, Congress’s quadrennial ritual of counting electoral votes and blessing the enthronement of the next President of the United States.

Their goal was to, in words emblazoned on some of the signs they carried, “Stop The Steal.” They seemed to genuinely believe (in the face of overwhelming evidence to the contrary) that Donald Trump, rather than Joe Biden, was the rightful winner of the election.

If there’s anything more dangerous than believing something that isn’t true, it’s getting together with thousands of other people who believe the same thing to act on that belief. The IQ of a large group is inversely proportional to the number of people in that group.

The attempted putsch was never going to succeed. Not just because its shock troops seemed to be mostly even fatter and more out of shape than me, nor because they were obviously going to be out-gunned once the surprise wore off and the government’s law enforcement and military machinery responded. Even if those things hadn’t been true, grievance just isn’t a sound substitute for strategy. The putsch was doomed because it was stupid.

“Imagine,” talk radio host Aria DiMezzo tweeted as the news began to break,  “being so upset about not getting the tyrant you wanted that you storm the tyrants’ building and demand the tyrants break the tyrants’ own laws to change who the next tyrant is. Hope they brought tar and feathers, though.”

Can I get an amen?

Once the Capitol was cleared, the politicians returned to posture.

This disgraceful incident, some said, is something one expects to see in a banana republic, not in America, hoping the rest of us haven’t  noticed that they themselves spent the last three quarters of a century turning America into exactly such a banana republic.

We must carry out our sacred duties under the Constitution by completing this ritual, some said, hoping the rest of us haven’t noticed that they themselves squat over, and defecate upon, the Constitution, on a daily basis.

But we HAVE noticed, each in our own way. The “Stop The Steal” crowd and Black Lives Matter may seem like very different movements, but they’re both driven by growing recognition that America doesn’t work anymore, and probably never did work as well as its public relations department would have us believe.

As Lysander Spooner put it, the Constitution “has either authorized such a government as we have had, or has been powerless to prevent it. In either case, it is unfit to exist.”

Nothing lasts forever. Not even the United States. Eventually, per Yeats, “Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold.”

Things are falling apart. The centre is not holding.

So, what comes next? I don’t know. But the Beer Belly Putsch is  evidence that whatever’s next, it’s at the door and knocking.

Thomas L. Knapp (Twitter: @thomaslknapp) is director and senior news analyst at the William Lloyd Garrison Center for Libertarian Advocacy Journalism (thegarrisoncenter.org). He lives and works in north central Florida.

PUBLICATION/CITATION HISTORY

• “The Beer Belly Putsch: A Sign of Things to Come,” by Thomas L. Knapp, OpEdNews, 01/07/21
• “The Beer Belly Putsch: A Sign of Things to Come,” by Thomas L. Knapp, Anchorage, Alaska Press, 01/07/21
• “The Beer Belly Putsch: A Sign of Things to Come,” by Thomas L. Knapp, CounterPunch, 01/08/21
• “The Beer Belly Putsch: A Sign of Things to Come,” by Thomas L. Knapp, Ventura County, California Citizens Journal, 01/09/21
• “The beer belly putsch: A sign of things to come,” by Thomas L. Knapp, Lake Havasu City, Arizona News-Herald, 01/09/21