Turnabout is Fair Play

The time is ripe for revolution.” – Rules for Radicals

After providing most of the opposition to the Civil Rights Act of 1964, Democrats finally realized the errors of their racist past and began to falsely claim that an ideological switch had been made with the Republicans, the party whose first President was Lincoln and was formed by abolitionists who opposed slavery.  As it goes, Democrats who represented the slaveholders of the South, instituted the Jim Crow laws following Emancipation and supported the KKK, went to the Republicans and asked if they would agree to take over as the racist party.  Fortunately for them, the Republicans said Yes.  As the newly established anti-racist party, Democrats would go on to represent, not blacks themselves, but the black voting bloc, by advocating for policies that increased their dependence on the government.  Thus, creating a narrative for the Democrats as the party of government for decades to come.

In Saul Alinsky’s 1971 book, “Rules for Radicals”, Alinsky offers an instructional handbook on how the Have-Nots could shift power away from the greedy few and hand it back to the deserving many.  Alinsky, a political theorist, viewed the imbalance of power as the primary cause of the struggle between the haves and the have-nots.  By identifying the ends, and then choosing the appropriate means, the powerless could transform the unequal system that allowed the Haves to succeed and maintain the status quo.  Although the book is not ideological, it was the Democrats who first used its recommendations as a blueprint to gain power by raising a multitude of community organizers to create a mass movement to shake up an unjust system.  And Alinsky seemingly succeeded beyond all expectations, as Democrats now run nearly every institution in society, as the established elite juggernaut. 

Alinsky believed that if you change the power structure, you can fix inequality.  Viewing poverty as a political condition, collective action was the only cure.  Yet, trillions spent on federal welfare dollars over the past fifty years have not resulted in raising the prospects of the poor.  Undoubtedly, the biggest difference between the Haves and the Have-Nots is the lack of a traditional family (i.e., a household with a mother and a father).  Without a father’s guidance, his offspring are often left with a lack of a moral foundation, resulting in an absence of personal responsibility.  But the government cannot fix the lack of agency that follows.  Instead, what all this collective activism did was create an underclass perpetually dependent on the government. 

And yet, what all this welfare did, was take a toll on another group of lower-income individuals, the working class, who vehemently oppose handouts.  For them, a real change occurred in 2016 when populism, arriving in the form of candidate Donald Trump, took center stage.  With the tables now turned, Trump promised to disrupt the established power structure on their behalf.  And in so doing, transformed Alinsky’s have-nots from the traditional minority class to the working class, who have been all but abandoned by the Democrats.  Promising to make America Great Again at a time of increasing cultural dissolution, Trump’s base grew by drawing in middle-class suburbanites, activating a large sector of the silent majority.  This new populist movement has taken up the mantle and now represents the revolutionaries.   

The new masses, now united by Trump against the establishment elites, were viewed as illiterate and denounced by Hillary Clinton as deplorable.   Too often demoralized, forgotten, and unable to make it under the current system, populism was a cure crafted just for them.  Now patriots, nationalists, and proud Americans have a leader united with them in their unwillingness to cede their heritage to a new world order. 

In the fifty years since Alinsky’s book was first published, the Democrats have gone from rebels with a cause to the Washingtonian establishment, no longer representing the interests of the working class or the minorities they hoped to exploit.  Now, like the pigs in Orwell’s Animal Farm who escaped the stables for the big house, they are greater than the others.  Tragically, the political elite's plan to destroy the family by creating a victimhood mentality rife with entitlement has worked beautifully for them.  With Democrats controlling big cities like Chicago, Detroit, Baltimore, and Philadelphia, poor blacks continue to languish from their continuing embrace of dependency. 

Populist Republicans are now poised as the party of rebellion and are ready to employ the words of Alinsky for their own benefit.  Alinsky’s fight in the 1970s was against the powers that be.  With Democrats representing the establishment regime, a new generation is taking the fight to a new group of Haves, and the opportunity for change couldn’t be better.