The New American Revolution Has Begun

Trump and the billionaire oligarchs have finally gone too far.

Americans take to the streets to protest Donald Trump and Elon Musk. Image via Global News

by Rich Herschlag

I'd like to clear up a bit of confusion out there. A lot of people think the national religion is Christianity. It's not. Nor is it Judaism, Islam, Buddhism, Sikhism, or Hinduism. Nor is it atheism, agnosticism, or pantheism. Materialism comes close, but a sizeable majority of Americans are morally well beyond constant craving for what is not theirs. The American religion is property rights.

Though originally shrouded in notions of personal and religious liberty, property rights were not only the core of our evolving national identity in the 18th century but the very reason the bloody American Revolution was waged in the first place. Property rights were the reason for the Civil War, as modifying the definition of such a basic value not to include other human beings proved far too much to settle legally and amicably.

Property rights are the reason if someone breaks into your home to rob you of your belongings or worse, you can shoot him. Or worse. No problema. In that event you'll get quite a consensus from Christians, Jews, Muslims, Buddhists, Sikhs, Hindus, atheists, agnostics, and pantheists. You can even get a few Quakers to go along with you.

Today, however, Project 2025, the religious far right, a handful of American oligarchs, Vladimir Putin, Saudi royalty, and a few players yet to be identified have bet the American public have lost the will for violent rebellion. In their opinion, the average American retired teacher stripped of her Social Security would never take resistance a hair beyond a pink hat and a funny sign. In their opinion, the average American veteran having now, after laying his or her life on the line repeatedly yet having lost access to basic care, either left their courage on a foreign battlefield or is available for domestic physical resistance only on behalf of fascist causes such as restricting bathroom rights for trans people.

In their opinion, the average American blue-collar worker, white-collar worker, accountant, engineer, travel agent, Uber driver, chef, programmer, nurse, engineer, architect, arborist, farmer, mechanic is simply too overwhelmed by the day to day battle of economic and social survival and too addicted to the modern narcotics of iPhones, social media, and platform streaming to pull themselves out of the gaming chair they got for Christmas and take matters into their own hands.

In their opinion, we the people are a bunch of slugs and suckers. Pathetic mediocre losers paying a justified price for not being born into or buying wholesale into the modern ruling class structure. Political patsies, pawns, little more than a revenue source for their high level 5D Chess schemes to squeeze the remaining puss out of what we still mistakenly thought was ours. And so, steeped in these beliefs, undoubtedly supported here and there by both past civic laziness and a plurality popular vote victory for their aging, rotting, laughable shill, these would-be tyrants have pulled the trigger dozens of times over the past several weeks, doubling down on the conviction that the time to conquer is at hand. That in this arm wrestling match where Jane and John Doe have a forearm an inch off the table it's time to close the deal.

With a wind at their backs consisting mostly of flatulence from buckets of Kentucky Fried Chicken, they pulled the ripcord on a collection of tariffs so brutal, punitive, and counter-productive to the typical citizen he or she would just let the arm hit the table and call it a match. Yes, they calculated, we would all be Roberto Durán yelling, "No más!"

Well, turns out it's the first salvo of a war the armchair fascists were never prepared to fight. Congratulations. Like a crack addict seeing only one more vial of crack, you went for it. You crossed that line. You may try to backpedal it a bit, because no one is more duplicitous or insincere than you, but it's too late to turn back.

You violated the Social Compact. At its heart our Social Compact was simple. Go to school, get along, stay out of the really bad trouble, secure an education one way or another, then put your head down for 20, 30, 40 years and pay into the system. Social Security. Medicare. 401(k)s. IRAs. College savings for your kids. Mortgage one. Mortgage two. Mortgage three. Clean our sewers, design our parks, teach our kids to read, cook our omelets, install our replacement windows, align our wheels, insert our catheters, and damnit motherfucker don't you ever miss a payment or object beyond the level of a Facebook post.

As the new autocracy gained a foothold some of us resisted and some did not. Some of us reread the Constitution and some did not. You did pretty well for a while with your dark money and cynical divide-and-conquer strategy, and for good measure our indifference and preoccupation was more than a bit of a boon to you. But now it's a matter of religion—our essential religion, the only thing, unfortunately, that unites us. You crossed the line. You urinated on the third rail and laughed. You tried to scorch our sinew, and it turns out it’s the very sinew that binds us.

You thought you had us in a headlock. You thought the war was as good as over. You got greedy because greed is all you know. You talk a good game about Heaven, but we both know you sold your shares many years ago and are now just getting high on house money. The high is never high enough or long-lasting enough, so you lunge at another hit in your freefall to perdition figuring one day you'll be so powerful you can overturn the spiritual laws of the universe.

As it turns out you don't even have a handle on the simple ethos of this nation. In your avarice, arrogance, naked opportunism and rush to a sordid material Promised Land you played your hand early and at a time when the masses you so loathe are finally waking up. It was a gross miscalculation, and the karmic suffering is coming back at you in a hurry. You think you are Machiavelli, but you have underestimated your enemy. You have unleashed far more than you are ready to absorb, and as Hillel said, "If not now, when?"

As another great philosopher, James Baldwin, said, there is nothing more dangerous than a man with nothing to lose. You have created millions upon millions of them in a few short weeks. The New American Revolution has begun. It's not what you had in mind. But you own it, and it's coming for you.

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