“In my opinion, however, you are committing a fundamental error, that is, you believe that this can be solved politically, through the classic procedures of parliamentary democracy,” one reader wrote to me.
There must be a misunderstanding behind this. I am saying something completely different. What is decisive is whether one has the ability to impose one’s will. Those who have that ability can win elections. But he can also win through electoral fraud and no one can stop him. Or he can assert himself through litigation. Or go the reform route. Or he can push through a general strike. Or intimidate or quietly “deplatform” opponents. Or influence MPs. And if it came to it, he could win a bloody civil war.
So the fundamental question in any political dispute is: which side is able to impose its will on the other? Everything else is technicalities.
So the fundamental question in any political dispute is: which side is able to impose its will on the other? Everything else is technicalities.
How far does government’s power extend?
So why are there disputes in the first place? First, because it is often not clear in advance who has the power. Each side tends to overestimate its position. And it is often the case that the balance of power is really even, and that in a clash it depends on chance, momentary shape, etc.
Besides, power is never distributed so that one side has everything and the other has nothing. It’s always somewhere in between. Take the current situation in the Western world. The new aristocracy (liberal oligarchy) has the power to push through measures that will reduce the real income of the working classes. It has that power regardless of what is written in the constitution and regardless of what the people think. Yet it cannot afford to do anything. For example, it cannot – as Meni, the unifier of Egypt, supposedly did millennia ago – have all the men in the districts where Donald Trump won the election castrated. Perhaps it would be possible, with the help of special military or police units, to round up and emasculate some citizens, but if the government were to go ahead with this, it would lead to such a disruption that it would completely lose the ability to enforce its will.
Continue reading on Arktos website
