The Nature of Political Power

Yesterday and several days previously I was engaged online in one of those kinds of conversations with a liberal troll that just seems to last forever. You know the type. It’s one of those things that is like stepping in fresh dog crap, where it just sticks to your shoe and you can’t get it off. Then it kind of smears out and gets everywhere and there’s really no effective way to get it off, leaving you with the lingering smell that follows you everywhere until you have a chance to wash your shoes.

During that conversation my adversary, who pretended to be a conservative to the degree that he uses the name of one of the Founding Fathers, told me that I’m just a silly old man who thinks he’s a political philosopher. He meant it as an insult. Well first of all, in order for me to think of it as insulting I would have to think his opinion of me was important enough to be hurt by it. Secondly, that’s exactly, bang on the dot, precisely what I am. I’m a sixty year old man who has been studying political philosophy, outside of academia and on my own, ever since I was twenty, when I was sworn into the United States Navy. I also have a sense of humor about myself and most everything I write about.

The subject of that conversation was not this most humble, unlettered and humorous author. As liberals always do when they are losing, this guy tried to make the conversation about me and my qualifications to comment upon such important and weighty subjects as the proper functions of government, rather than talking about the subject at hand. Fortunately I have received enough experience to recognize when I’m being diverted and steer the conversation back to the actual issue we were discussing.

The subject at hand was the age old, often repeated, conversation which could be titled, “The United States; Is It a Democracy or Republic?” And that’s what has been on my mind for the last couple of days. Normally whatever is on my mind for several days prior to the weekend, when I write a blog post, is what I write the blog post about. Unfortunately I just wrote about that a couple of weeks ago and while it is an interesting subject I don’t really feel that it’s right to repeat myself so soon.

There is nothing really going on in day to day politics that is of interest to me other than the vote for the Speaker of the House, which really is a choice between one guy with no named opposition. Boring and pointless other than to say that the one guy, that we have a choice between, seems to be one of those stereotypical RINOs who will vote in lock step with the Demoncraps on everything they can think of to squeeze around the constitutional limits and increase the power of the federal government in every single way they possibly can.

Still stewing around in my mind on a slow burn, behind the conversation regarding the United States as a republic or the United States as a democracy, is the core idea of why such conversations are so very important. It is very clear to me, and many of the kind of people who enjoy reading my words on the subject, that the United States federal government has gone off the rails. I regard it as a daily miracle that we make it to the end of another day without some catastrophic Soviet style collapse of the country leaving all of the States to fend for themselves.

In such an environment, especially where the People, government officials, the news media and seemingly everybody else under the sun, can’t even properly identify what kind of government they have, I think it’s important for the People to understand the true nature of political power. There is a right way to think about it and a wrong—in my opinion—way to think about it.

Subject to your approval or disapproval, however the case may be, is one well known mass murderer, communist and tyrannical totalitarian named Mao Zedong. I’ve seen estimates on the number of Chinese people dead as a result of his rule range as high as eight million people. It should be no surprise that he is credited with coining the phrase that “Political power grows out of the barrel of a gun.”

On the flipside of this debate we have, well, little old me; sitting here in my nice warm bathrobe, sipping coffee and writing the words which you now see before you.

Of course there is a plethora of real world and historical examples of guns being used to wield what people all over the planet call political power. It does seem rather apparent that between the two of us Mao is right. Who are the likes of one apparently “arrogant, self righteous, self educated and self important” Brett Ashton to go up against the great and mighty Mao?

Well, challenge accepted. I’m not the guy who killed an estimated eighty million people. To date I’ve killed nobody. I think that fact alone places me well above him in terms of both honesty and honor as well as morality, and it should give me some credibility in the matter.

The difference between the great and venerable Mao and I comes down to a perceptive split between how we look at political power. There is forced political power, which seems real and obvious, comes at the muzzle of a gun, seems absolute and invulnerable, yet somehow keeps crashing in the most spectacular and violent of ways. Then there is persuasive political power, which is subtle, peaceful, prosperous and relatively unchanging over long periods of time, collapsing only when forceful political power takes over and is used against the People in a way that is oppressive to them.

Forced political power is the kind that Mao used. That he was effective at it seems rather obvious.

In spite of the fact that there are groups of people who act towards the achievement of various goals, at the basic level all human action and interaction is individual. So let me ask you on an individual basis; if Joe Biden came and put a gun directly against your head and said, “Do you support me?” what would your answer be? My answer would be “Yes, I fully and completely support you,” right up until he removed the gun, at which point I would go into the voting booth and pull the handle for someone else.

Why is this? Simple. It’s because his gun has not changed my mind about him except to convince me that he’s not the guy I want with the power of a gun over my life. As long as the threat is there, people will comply. This does not mean that they really believe in their compliance to the depths of their souls. It only means that someone is pointing a gun at them. In human nature they do as people do when someone threatens them and has the ability to carry it out. As soon as the threat is removed, or when it becomes so intolerable they feel they have nothing to lose, they do something else and that something else which they do tends to be proportionally spectacular.

That, right there, is the muzzle of the gun theory at work. That’s all there is to it. Tyrants, by their own actions, sow the seeds of their downfall by making their own enemies through their oppression of people. This is an appearance of power but what it really comes down to is just a simple use of force against people to make them propitiate.

Then there is the other approach, to which I have dedicated my life.

They say that political power comes from the muzzle of a gun. While it is true that it is sometimes enforced by the muzzles of guns it is not in the nature of bullets to carry intelligence. Political power really comes from communication and support for ideas. To gain real and lasting political power we have to be persistent, consistent and always on the attack.

Effective communication and persuasion is the real key to real and lasting political power. Let’s continue to look at Chairman Mao for a bit. There he is, all by himself, with a gun. Have you as an individual ever tried to rule a country with an iron fist, to the degree that you can kill eighty million people and get away with it, all by yourself? What would Mao have had to do at the basic level in order to be elevated to the level where he could do such a thing?

Well, he would have to first communicate to a bunch of people and persuade them that he was worthy of being such a leader. He would have to convince a whole lot of people that there was something for them to personally gain by following him. Nobody ruling a country stands alone, someone has to support them. People who support such a ruler don’t just spontaneously materialize out of nowhere. Even the best of the world’s tin-horned dictators can’t just go around pointing a gun at everybody, expecting them to mindlessly follow him through threat of force alone.

This is exactly why there is such a pitched battle going on in all of the lines of public mass communications. Big Tech social media in modern times, news media and the education system always are the leading edge of the political wars between good and evil. For the bad guys with the guns to succeed they have to control the communication lines to the public. For the good guys with the other guns they also have to control the communication lines to the public. Tyrants always wish to suppress their opposition’s ability to get their words out.

Why? Because real political power is a threat to their agenda. Obviously. There are people out there whom they curse because they will tell the truth about them and what they are trying to do. There is an interesting word for such a tyrant. Demagogue: a political leader who gains power by appealing to people's emotions, instincts, and prejudices in a way that is considered manipulative and dangerous.

Fortunately there is something that can, if used properly, counter the actions of such people. It goes like this; “Amendment I, Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.”

(Interesting historical side note here: The First Amendment was actually proposed as the Third Amendment. The first two failed ratification and so the third then became the first.)

You can believe what you want and you can say it. And when the government gets it wrong you can tell them and everybody else about it. Can you think of anything that would be more dangerous to someone who tries to wield political power by the use of guns? I can’t. If the truth was commonly known as it is, the political support that relies on lies would blow away like chaff in the wind. Political leaders who rely on lies and guns to enforce their power, Mussolini for example, tend to end up shot to death, hanging upside-down in a public square while people throw vegetables at their corpses, while one woman deciding that he wasn’t dead enough for her put five more bullets into his body.

(Another side note here: There is actually a picture of this. At the risk of having this post taken down for potential violations of terms of service I have decided not to post it here. Yet I provide the link so you can view it at your own discretion.)

There are times however when the public communication lines fail due to the efforts of despotic wannbes. Sometimes very bad people will force you to shoot them. Thus we have this; “A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.”

Some might argue, “Brett, you counter your own argument here! See? It’s the muzzles of guns!”

Yes. By sheer coincidence the Second Amendment happens to be in the position which supports my counter argument. When the First fails, and only when the First fails, is where we take the fall back to the Second. When the use of force against the People becomes so prolific as to be considered abusive to them, war breaks out and we are in the position where we can hopefully defend ourselves as a last and desperate attempt to preserve our lives, our fortunes and our sacred honor.

It’s generally considered to be very bad manners to shoot someone before you even introduce yourself.

Don’t do it unless you have to.