The Goading

Guest Post by Eric Peters

What are they up to?

It is obvious that the Left is doing its damndest to goad the not-Left (it isn’t the Right, at least not uniformly – as opposed to the uniformity of Left) into doing something about what the Left is doing to “our democracy,” as the Left likes to style its one-party dominion over politics and acceptable thought.

How else to explain the Left’s obviously political persecution of the Orange pinata? It is clear the Left isn’t whacking him so much as goading us to do something useful to the Left. Something like the “insurrection”- as the Left refers to the unarmed protest  that took place after the Orange pinata was removed from office by the Left.

It was far too peaceful an “insurrection” to suit the Left. It needs a real one – and in time to assure “our democracy” does not fall into the hands of the not-Left.

As the character in The Empire Strikes Back warned, it’s a trap!

Just the same as January 6 – only worse – because if the not-Left allows itself to be maneuvered into committing the first overt act, as Franklin Delano Roosevelt put it, the Left will have everything it needs to wage the war it wants to preserve “our democracy.”

FDR wanted a war like that, too.

AFTER CHRISTMAS DEALS

Or – rather – an excuse to get America into the war. And so he goaded the Japanese, first by provocatively stationing most of the Pacific Fleet at Pearl Harbor, in Hawaii – which was (and is) halfway to Japan. Then he applied economic pressure by cutting off Japan’s supply of the oil it had to have in order to fuel its ships (and so on).

The American public – prior to the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor – wanted nothing to do with the war, to the tune of 80-plus percent opposed to America getting into the war. By goading the Japanese to commit the first overt act, FDR also goaded Adolf Hitler into declaring war on the United States and thereby goaded Americans into being overwhelming in favor of going to war with Germany and Japan.

Similarly, the Southern Confederacy allowed itself to be maneuvered into committing the first overt act by Abraham Lincoln, who was a creature very much like the Biden Thing in that he was a tyrannical consolidator (consolidation without consent entailing violence to achieve it being definitionally tyrannical; and by violence is just exactly how Lincoln “preserved the Union,” which meant the cementing of the absolute power of the consolidated federal government over all the states, not just the Southern ones).

The psychology of the thing is not only important, it is arguably determinative. Most people instinctively dislike/disapprove of the man who throws the first punch – for they regard him as the aggressor – and understand, amen and defend the man who punches back. It does not matter that the man who throws the first punch may have been goaded so badly that his throwing it is both understandable and even necessary, in the moment it was thrown.

The throwing of the first punch by the South – at Fort Sumter in South Carolina – was tactically justifiable but politically (psychologically) foolish.

It was thrown because the fort guarded the South’s most important port; the reasoning (of the Southern leadership) was that if the Northern forces were left in control of the fort, they would be able to control what entered the port. More precisely, what would be unable to enter the port – thus depriving the South of the resources it badly needed and would need more of. It was reasonable reasoning very much of a piece, when you think about it, with the reasoning of the Japanese leadership to throw a punch (which they hoped would be a knockout blow) at the American Pacific Fleet stationed at Pearl Harbor.

They both reasoned wrongly.

In both cases – as well as in our case – it would be better if the aggressor threw the first punch. It would make it clear who the aggressor is, for starters – and that’s no small thing. It might be the most important thing. It certainly might have been that, in the case of what is absurdly styled (for obvious psychological reasons) the American “Civil War.” Which was no such thing since it was never the aim of the Southern Confederacy to take control of the country but rather to form their own, new one. That was an aim approved of by an interestingly large percentage of Northern public opinion, which wanted no part of a war to force the Southern states back into “union” at bayonet-point.

And at the cost of hundreds of thousands of Northern as well as Southern lives.

Had Lincoln been obliged to commit the first overt act – to pursue the course he always intended – it would have been seen by public opinion in the North as just exactly that, rather than a necessary response to an attack.

The Left is doing its best – that is, its worst – to goad the not-Left into doing just exactly what will serve to justify the course the Left already intends to pursue and is pursuing. Only it will be more so if we allow ourselves to be maneuvered into throwing it.

So let’s not be goaded into throwing it.

Vivek Ramaswamy – the unlikely presidential aspirant – showed how not to be goaded the other day. An aggressively Leftist LBGTQ+ (and probably xyzpdq, too) “activist” attempted to goad the candidate into saying something “hateful” or “homophobic.” Instead of reacting in a way that would have amped up the tension, Vivek refused to be goaded. Instead, he very deftly, very calmly, responded – with reason rather than a counterpunch.

It diffused the tension. It showed that we don’t need to be throwing punches at one another. The lesson being it will be much more difficult – psychologically (and so otherwise) for the Left to say we threw the first punch if we refuse to be goaded into throwing it. And that will make it much less tenable for the Left, if it decides to go ahead and throw the first punch our way.

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