A Geek with Guns - Politics

Why Can't People See The Descent into Fascism

2025-08-12T12:00:00+00:00

Donald Trump has deployed the National Guard in Washington D.C. to fight crime</a>. According to many people, especially those who sit on the left side of the political spectrum, this is the moment when the United States became a fascist nation. Of course many of them said that moment came when ICE started rounding up illegal aliens. And many of them said that moment came when Trump won the presidential election. Why can't people agree on when a government becomes fascist?

Part of the reason is that fascism is a loosely defined ideology. The ideology can be boiled down to a single charismatic leader making all of the important decisions. When the leader says that a free market economy is important, then a free market economy becomes the fascist ideal. When the same leader changes his mind and says that a control economy is important, then a control economy becomes the fascist ideal. Another part of the reason is that people use fascism synonymously with authoritarianism and people don't agree on what is authoritarian and what is just good governing.

I have a long laundry list of what is authoritarian. Let me list a few. Any government restriction against the private ownership of weapons is authoritarian. Any attempt by the government to censor speech is authoritarian. The government performing widespread surveillance is authoritarian. The government running black sites where prisoners are held without due process is authoritarian.

Most people have a much shorter list than I do. Many people believe government restrictions against the private ownership of weapons is good governing to protect the people. Many people believe the government must curtail hate speech or the promotion of dangerous ideologies like fascism. Many people approve of government surveillance so long as it's targeted against people they dislike. Many people are also OK with the government running black sites so long as the prisoners being held without due process are foreigners or terrorists.

The same is true with deploying the National Guard in Washington D.C. to fight crime. Some consider it authoritarian. Others consider it a necessary action to keep the people of that city safe.

This issue has another dimension of complexity. Most people's definition of authoritarian changes depending on who is implementing a policy. During the administration of George H. W. Bush, most people on the left screamed that the Global War on Terror, Guantanamo Bay, the PATRIOT Act, and many other post-9/11 decisions were authoritarian/fascist. When Barack Obama was elected, their opinions changed almost immediately. Even though Obama campaign on ending the Global War on Terror and closing Guantanamo Bay, he did neither and his supporters didn't hold it against them. Most of them simply pretended neither existed. Some of his supporters decided that both were necessary. Likewise, his supporters either ignored or supported his lack of effort to repeal the PATRIOT Act. People don't just disagree with each other on what is authoritarian. They disagree with their past selves too.

Why can't people see the descent into fascism? People can't agree on a definition of fascism. People can't agree on what acts of government are and aren't fascist. People can't even agree with their past selves on what is fascist.

It's Your Fault

2025-07-01T12:00:00+00:00

I seldom touch the topic of global warming because too many people treat it like a religion. You're either a believer or you're wrong. But there's one aspect about this discussion that never fails to amuse me. Those who believe that it's happening and it's manmade also unanimously agree that it's your fault. Yes, you. The person reading this right now. Global warming is your fault.

I feel confident in staying this because I don't believe I have any politicians or extremely wealthy (I'm talking private jet and yacht wealth) individuals reading my blog. A lot of them, at least in public, believe that global warming is happening and it's manmade. They believe this so strongly that they fly their private jets to resort locations multiple times per year to discuss the topic with each other. These discussions take place in comfortable, climate controlled event centers. They're catered with exquisite foods. The guests enjoy refined luxury accommodations.

During these events, they discuss many topics including causes of global warming. Too many people running air conditioners, too many people driving cars, too many people flying, too many people eating meat that comes from cows whose farts cause the temperature to rise. They also discuss ways to fix global warming. Stop people from running their air conditioners... unless they own multiple mansions. Require people to use mass transit... unless they're important enough to warrant a private car. Prohibit people from flying... unless they own private jets. Force people to eat vegetarian food... unless they're wealthy enough to afford carbon credits to go with their meat.

When the conference is over, the attendees board their private jets and fly back to one of their mansions.

The best example of global warming being your fault is probably the recent announcements surrounding energy production for "AI</abbr>." Ever since the mainstream noticed Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies, we've been told how terrible they are for the environment due to their power usage and that they must be shutdown to save Mother Gaia. When several large, wealth corporations like OpenAI, Google, and Microsoft started investing in "AI," it was quickly noticed that they too require tremendous amounts of power. Were we told that "AI" needed to be shutdown to save Moth Gaia? No! Instead we're being told that nuclear power plants will be built to feed these massive power hogs. Why weren't new nuclear power plants given as an option when we little people wanted to create our own currency? Hell, why weren't new nuclear power plants mentioned when we little people wanted to run our air conditioners? Because we're little people.

When hundreds of little people board a passenger jet to fly somewhere, it's bad for the environment. When hundreds of wealthy people each board a separate private jet to fly somewhere, it's not bad for the environment. When you drive your car somewhere, it's bad for the environment. When a politician has an entire motorcade to drive somewhere, it's not bad for the environment. When you run your air conditioner, it's bad for the environment. When companies owned by billionaires or governments air condition hundreds of massive office buildings and data centers, it's not bad for the environment.

The next time you watch a politician or a billionaire talk about global warming and propose solutions that force you to sacrifice your quality of life, ask yourself what their environmental impact is. I think you'll quickly conclude that it's far greater than your own. With that realization in mind, ask yourself why you're being the one blamed and forced to sacrifice your quality of life.

The Rebel Rule Follower

2025-05-30T09:00:00+00:00

I'm not sure if it's a recent trend, but I've heard a lot of leftists citing the works of Ted Kaczynski lately. Based on what I knew about Kaczynski's beliefs, I found this trend odd and suspected many of the people citing his works never actually read them. So I decided to read his more famous work, Industrial Society and Its Future</a>. Now I'm certain that the people now citing him haven't read his works. How he describes lefists is quite different from how leftists typically describe themselves.

Most people who describe themselves as socialists, communists, and left-leaning anarchists, at least here in the United States, believe they are opposed to the norms of our society. They view our society as capitalistic and they are against capitalism. They view our society as white and they are against whiteness. They view our society as colonial and they are against colonialism. However, our society is largely against all of those things. Both the majority of people and the government believe the economy must be regulated and controlled. The only difference between the views of right- and left-leaning individuals on this topic is the extent to which it needs to be controlled. Racists are in the minority amongst the general population. Very few would support laws that discriminated based on race. Likewise, very few people would support the idea of the United States conquering a foreign country and claiming it as a colony. If you don't believe me, just look at the push back to Trump's proposal to make Greenland and Canada part of the United States.

What modern leftists actually are according to Ted Kaczynski are extremist rule followers. From Industrial Society and Its Future:

9. The two psychological tendencies that underlie modern leftism we call feelings of inferiority and oversocialization. Feelings of inferiority are characteristic of modern leftism as a whole, while oversocialization is characteristic only of a certain segment of modern leftism; but this segment is highly influential. </blockquote>
First he discussed feelings of inferiority:

12. Those who are most sensitive about “politically incorrect” terminology are not the average black ghetto-dweller, Asian immigrant, abused woman or disabled person, but a minority of activists, many of whom do not even belong to any “oppressed” group but come from privileged strata of society. Political correctness has its stronghold among university professors, who have secure employment with comfortable salaries, and the majority of whom are heterosexual white males from middle to upper-class families.
13. Many leftists have an intense identification with the problems of groups that have an image of being weak (women), defeated (American Indians), repellent (homosexuals), or otherwise inferior. The leftists themselves feel that these groups are inferior. They would never admit to themselves that they have such feelings, but it is precisely because they do see these groups as inferior that they identify with their problems. (We do not mean to suggest that women, Indians, etc., ARE inferior; we are only making a point about leftist psychology.)
14. Feminists are desperately anxious to prove that women are as strong and as capable as men. Clearly they are nagged by a fear that women may NOT be as strong and as capable as men.
15. Leftists tend to hate anything that has an image of being strong, good and successful. They hate America, they hate Western civilization, they hate white males, they hate rationality. The reasons that leftists give for hating the West, etc., clearly do not correspond with their real motives. They SAY they hate the West because it is warlike, imperialistic, sexist, ethnocentric and so forth, but where these same faults appear in socialist countries or in primitive cultures, the leftist finds excuses for them, or at best he GRUDGINGLY admits that they exist; whereas he ENTHUSIASTICALLY points out (and often greatly exaggerates) these faults where they appear in Western civilization. Thus it is clear that these faults are not the leftist’s real motive for hating America and the West. He hates America and the West because they are strong and successful. </blockquote>
While this section discusses how leftists are projecting their own feelings of inferiority onto others, I think it's at least adjacent to the next section on oversocialization. Specifically on how leftists rise to the defense of any group they perceive as weak or oppressed. They typically don't do it through violence. Instead they do it through rule following to the extreme.
Leftists often take it upon themselves to be the police of language and thought. In this capacity, they take common societal beliefs, such as insults and kicking somebody when they're down being bad, to an absurd end. They're typically the first to scream at you for using the wrong word to refer to a group that they've identified as oppressed (kicking the group when they're down). This is especially evident when an adjective changes from approve to unapproved in their book. For example, the word retard. Retard was at one point a legitimate medical term to describe a child with an intellectual disability. I think it's obvious how it then morphed into an insult. When I was growing up, people threw around the word retard as an insult like people today throw around mother fucker. But then a group of leftists decided retard wasn't merely an insult. It was derogatory to an oppressed minority, namely people with intellectual disabilities. Once that happened, leftists were quick to descend on anybody who dared use the word retard even if it was in a technical context (with very early automobiles, you often had to "retard the spark" before you crank started the engine). I'm sure Kaczynski's use of the phrase "black ghetto-dweller" would cause many modern leftists to declare him a racist and demand his books be tossed into the trash bin of history (if they actually bothered to read his works).
According to Kaczynski, this tendency derives from leftists having a feeling of inferiority. Next he discussed his concept of oversocialization, which he says only covers a segment of leftists (if you're a leftist reading this, of course you're not in that segment):

28. The leftist of the oversocialized type tries to get off his psychological leash and assert his autonomy by rebelling. But usually he is not strong enough to rebel against the most basic values of society. Generally speaking, the goals of today’s leftists are NOT in conflict with the accepted morality. On the contrary, the left takes an accepted moral principle, adopts it as its own, and then accuses mainstream society of violating that principle. Examples: racial equality, equality of the sexes, helping poor people, peace as opposed to war, nonviolence generally, freedom of expression, kindness to animals. More fundamentally, the duty of the individual to serve society and the duty of society to take care of the individual. All these have been deeply rooted values of our society (or at least of its middle and upper classes[4]) for a long time. These values are explicitly or implicitly expressed or presupposed in most of the material presented to us by the mainstream communications media and the educational system. Leftists, especially those of the oversocialized type, usually do not rebel against these principles but justify their hostility to society by claiming (with some degree of truth) that society is not living up to these principles.
29. Here is an illustration of the way in which the oversocialized leftist shows his real attachment to the conventional attitudes of our society while pretending to be in rebellion against it. Many leftists push for affirmative action, for moving black people into high-prestige jobs, for improved education in black schools and more money for such schools; the way of life of the black “underclass” they regard as a social disgrace. They want to integrate the black man into the system, make him a business executive, a lawyer, a scientist just like upper middle-class white people. The leftists will reply that the last thing they want is to make the black man into a copy of the white man; instead, they want to preserve African-American culture. But in what does this preservation of African-American culture consist? It can hardly consist in anything more than eating black-style food, listening to black-style music, wearing black-style clothing and going to a black-style church or mosque. In other words, it can express itself only in superficial matters. In all ESSENTIAL respects most leftists of the oversocialized type want to make the black man conform to white middle-class ideals. They want to make him study technical subjects, become an executive or a scientist, spend his life climbing the status ladder to prove that black people are as good as white. They want to make black fathers “responsible,” they want black gangs to become nonviolent, etc. But these are exactly the values of the industrial-technological system. The system couldn’t care less what kind of music a man listens to, what kind of clothes he wears or what religion he believes in as long as he studies in school, holds a respectable job, climbs the status ladder, is a “responsible” parent, is nonviolent and so forth. In effect, however much he may deny it, the oversocialized leftist wants to integrate the black man into the system and make him adopt its values. </blockquote>
I've noted this tendency not just amongst leftists, but amongst most schools of thought outside of the mainstream. Very few schools of thought venture outside of their society's morals and norms. Those that do are typically despised by the masses. For example, libertarians are advocates for freedom of speech. Some especially edgy libertarians will demonstrate this by using racist words or phrases typically shunned by mainstream society. While the words they use may be against the morals and norms of society, the principle they're upholding (freedom of speech) is supported to at least some extend by the majority of people. They're violating one norm but in the name of upholding another.
Leftists are similar but their tactics differ. For example, in our society it's typically considered good form to care for the poor (this derives from the Christian morals upon which this country was founded). Libertarians try to uphold this principle but advocating for mutual aid and voluntary giving. Leftists try to uphold this principle by making it illegal to not give to the poor. Specifically they demand tax money, the payment of which is legally enforced, be used to provide food, shelter, and clothing to the poor. Furthermore, if you express and objection with their strategy, they immediately accuse you of hating the poor. Even if you do agree with their strategy, they'll continue to express anger because you're not supportive enough. There's no winning because the rule can never be followed strictly enough.
I largely agree with Kaczynski on these points. His observations, as should be obvious from what I just wrote, mirror my own although he came at it from a different direction. I also disagree with many of his points. I'm not convinced that what he calls surrogate activities are bad. I also don't believe our problems can be fixed by reverting to pre-industrial society. I definitely believe the strategies he described to revert society to a pre-industrial one are impossible to realize. But I, unlike many lefists currently citing him, actually bothered to read his work before commenting on it. If they had bothered to read Industrial Society and Its Future, I'm sure they would've found him guilty of wrongthink in the first four sections (the excerpts cited in this post are from those sections). Not only did he criticize modern lefitism, but he also openly advocated for violating the morals and norms of society (although many leftists would've supported his bombings if he had chosen CEOs, Republicans, etc.).

Communist Holocaust Denial

2025-05-18T02:00:00+00:00

Neo-Nazis and white supremacists in general have a nasty habit of either downplaying or completely denying the Holocaust. Neo-Nazis especially confuse me when they do this because eradicating the Jews was a key platform of Nazism. But I digress. On the other side of the mass murder philosophical spectrum, communists flip their shit whenever somebody downplays or denies the Holocaust. This is notable because after they finish flipping their shit, they go and do the same thing</a>:

Students at a leading London university have been condemned as blind to reality after defending the system of Soviet Gulag labour camps where thousands perished as “compassionate” places of rehabilitation.
Trans rights campaigners at Goldsmiths University described the Gulags as benign places where inmates received education, training and enjoyed the opportunity to take part in clubs, sports and theatre groups. </blockquote>
I linked to this story in particular because it came across my news feed but it's nowhere near an isolated incident. Where Neo-Nazis deny the Holocaust, communists deny the horrors inflicted by communist governments. Tankies, an especially loathsome breed of communist, are the worst offenders and almost always act as apologists for the mass murder perpetrated by the Soviet Union. But communists in general will either downplay or deny acts of democide committed by the Soviet Union, People's Republic of China, German Democratic Republic, and other communist regimes. If they don't downplay or deny the acts, they label the regimes "not real communism."
Ultimately every apologist for any flavor of statism will come face to face with democide committed by their preferred governmental system. Assuming they find democide distasteful, they will need to account for it. Pathetically most of them will try to downplay or deny the democide ever happened.

How Communism Succeeds

2025-05-04T11:00:00+00:00

I've been reading a lot about Cold War history as of late. Right now I'm in the midst of reading The Coldest War by James Brady, which covers the Korean War. The book spends a lot of time discussing the politics of the era, which valuable because the era receives little coverage in popular history. Much of the political discussion is focused on Mao's revolution in China. I've read about the Chinese Civil War before so none of the information is new to me, but for some reason reading about it in The Coldest War got me thinking about the strategies employed by communist revolutionaries.
Communism has a solid track record for winning revolutions. Russia was the first major one. After that countries started falling to communism like dominoes. China, North Korea, and Vietnam are probably the most well known to Americans. But East Germany, Poland, Afghanistan, Hungary, Romania, and many other countries experienced notable periods of communist rule. How did these revolutions succeed? During these revolutions, contemporaries often credited the Soviet Union with every communist victory. Even people today will often give the Soviet Union all the credit. But it wasn't as simple as that. In fact many revolutions, including Mao's in China, succeeded with little to no meaningful support from the Soviet Union.
Communism's success can be credited to several factors. It's tough to rank these factors from most to least important. They all play off of each other so I will discuss them in no particular order. The first factor is the sales pitch. Communism blatantly steals a page from anarchism by promising a stateless society. The difference between the two schools of philosophy is that communism claims that there is a need for a state to guide people into statelessness. The second factor to communism's success is the target of the sales pitch. Unlike many philosophies, communism doesn't target the wealthy, elite, or powerful. Communism as describe by Marx targets the workers, which he calls the proletariat. Post-Marx communist revolutionaries followed this theme but with slight variations. Mao targeted the peasants. Since China was still a feudal society at the time, there weren't a lot of proletariat around. Today's communists, especially here in the United States, target minority groups such as non-whites and transgender individuals in addition to works. The theme is targeting the downtrodden.
Targeting the downtrodden is an effective strategy because in almost every society the downtrodden are the majority. Not only are they the majority, they have often have little to lose and much to gain. Remember the state I mentioned previously? It has a specific form. It's supposed to be a dictatorship of the proletariat. In other words, after the communist revolution concludes, the revolutionaries will go from being the downtrodden of society to ruling it. The prospect of being in charge is especially enticing to somebody who has spent their life under the boot of a system. This is a page that communism stole (and constantly denies) from Christianity. Early Christian missionaries targeted the downtrodden too. For example, it become especially popular amongst slaves. Whereas many if not most religions at the time offered slaves little or nothing in terms of an afterlife, Christianity promised even the lowly slave an afterlife of paradise. Promising great things to those who have nothing is a great way to create true believers. Another factor of communism's widespread success is that many of those who fight for its cause are true believers in the philosophy.
I don't remember the exact podcast or episode, but Dan Carlin of Hardcore History fame and Daniele Bolelli of History on Fire fame discussed the differences between fascism and communism. One major difference was how the two dealt with European colonies. Fascists typically worked with the colonizers. Communists instead favored the colonized. While both philosophies ended in death and destruction for basically everyone living in a colony, communism enjoyed the benefit of offering the majority, the colonized, hope. This rhetoric is alive an well with today's communists who discuss decolonization in an attempt to attract indigenous peoples to their cause.
Creating true believers figures into another factor of communism's success. Communist revolutionaries rely on tactics that reflect their initial lack of resources. These tactics are often viewed as weaknesses to those steeped in modern military theory. But the fact that communist armies reliably defeat large state armies argues otherwise. If you study communist revolutions, you quickly realize that communists don't rely on traditional European (and European descendants like the United States) military tactics. Instead they engage in what European military tacticians refer to as irregular warfare. The opening salvo from a communist army isn't even from weaponry. Instead they first target the societal structure upon which the opposing military depends. Agitprop, a term combining agitation and propaganda, is the practice of using propaganda to create agitation in society to encourage infighting. Infighting creates instability and thus weakens the overall society. It is only after the societal structure has been weakened that communist armies typically engage in actual fighting.
The fighting methods of communist armies are where the true believers are most valuable. The conditions under which communist revolutionaries fight are often deplorable. Hunger, cold, and life on the run are the norm for communist revolutionaries. This is because communist armies typically remain mobile and rely on low technology. Remaining mobile makes it difficult for state armies to engage on their terms. State armies like decisive battles on large battlefields. These are battles where high technology like tanks, artillery, and aircraft are most effective. The weakness of high technology is that it's dependent on supply lines. Tanks, artillery, and aircraft are worthless without a constant supply of fuel and munitions. Furthermore, the soldiers who operate those weapons require food, water, medicine, clothing, etc. The larger the army, the greater the supply requirements become. Small infantry units like those typically employed by communist armies have much more modest supply requirements. In addition to that, true believers are more willing to suffer under conditions like hunger, especially if they were already suffering from those conditions before becoming a communist revolutionary.
One reason the United States and Republic of Korea forces got their teeth kicked in by Chinese forces during the Korean War is because their supply lines were stretched too far. MacArthur wanted to take the entire Korean peninsula quickly and pushed his forces to move as fast as possible. The Chinese forces, which had already entered Korea unbeknownst to MacArthur and those in his staff, were happy to let the United States forces move ahead unopposed until they reached the Yalu River. By then the forward forces were far ahead of their supply lines. Compounding that was the fact it was an especially brutal winter, which hindered the performance of high technology weapons like tanks. At this point the Chinese army hadn't become an established state military and still relies heavily on their civil war tactics. Using low technology weapons like mortars and rifles and relying on terrain to hide from American surveillance planes, the Chinese were able to fight effectively even in the brutal winter conditions and blunt much of the United States' technological advantage. Despite being a much lower tech force, the Chinese were able to push the United States into negotiations to end hostilities.
This post has already become much longer than I intended so I'll stop here. My hope is that anybody reading this is able to walk away with a slightly better understanding of revolutionary tactics in general. The factors described in this post aren't exhaustive nor are they exclusive to communism. They're effective for anybody willing and able to use them. I also hope that anybody reading this is better able to recognize these factors when they're being used. A careful eye may reveal that these factors are in play today and being used to manipulate people both online and off.

Politics Is Always A Cult of Personality

2025-04-04T11:00:00+00:00

According to Wikipedia</a> a cult of personality "is the result of an effort which is made to create an idealized and heroic image of a glorious leader, often through unquestioning flattery and praise." I believe there is a mistake with this description. Specifically it talks about a cult of personality being the result of an effort. However, there's really no effort required in most cases because supporters of a politician elevate him or her to heroic levels all by themselves.
I'm going to use Donald Trump's recently created tariffs</a> as an example. Most of his supporters with whom I've talked supported him largely because he promised to lower taxes. Tariffs are a tax. Since Trump has raised everybody's taxes significantly, his supporters must be criticizing him, right? Wrong. By and large, most of them are claiming his tariffs are a brilliant strategy that will usher manufacturing back to the United States. Before any Democrats get the idea that I'm on their side, let me point out that you all did the same damn thing with Obama. You were protesting the civil rights violations and wars instigated by George H. W. Bush and then supported Obama largely because he promised to reverse those civil rights violations and stop the wars. When he didn't do either, you cheered him anyways. So fuck you, too.
The benefit of not having a horse in any political race is that I get the benefit of seeing events as an outsider looking in. What I described about Donald Trump's and Barack Obama's supporters isn't unique or unusual. It's the norm. Joe Biden's supporters pretended his obvious signs of senility didn't exist, Kamala Harris' supporters convinced themselves that she wasn't dumber than a box of rocks, George H. W. Bush's supporters conveniently ignored the fact that he destroyed civil liberties, and Jeb Bush's supporters... never existed. The bottom line is that few voters hold a critical view of the politicians they support. They don't hold a critical view of politicians they oppose either. Instead their favored politicians are glorious and wonderful while their detested politicians are wicked and the source of all evil in the world.
This is yet another reason why nothing meaningful can be changed through political methods. If a politician's supporters aren't willing to hold him or her accountable, then nobody will. If nobody holds them accountable, they're free to do whatever they please and, like most humans, what they please to do is further empower themselves and their cronies.

We Were Warned

2024-11-04T06:00:00+00:00

Tomorrow voters here in the United States will choose whose boot will be stamping their face for the next four years. If you listen to the rhetoric, this election, like every election before it, is the most important election of our lifetime. If Kamala Harris wins, guns will become completely illegal to own, the means of production will be seized, and all of your kids will be forced to be transgender. If Donald Trump wins, he will declare himself emperor and eliminate future elections, make abortions completely illegal even when they're necessary to save the life of the mother, and send all immigrants to death camps.
Of course none of this rhetoric will come to pass. But people believe it will because the presidency has become absurdly powerful. Presidents head the powerful and prolific executive branch, which includes a large number of law enforcement, intelligence, and administrative agencies touching virtually all aspects of American life. They can effectively create laws through executive orders so long as neither Congress nor the Supreme Court challenges them (and they don't more often than note). The presidency is virtually a monarchy, which is exactly what the Anti-Federalists warned against.
Who were the Anti-Federalists? It's a question that should be answered in high school civics and history classes, but the deplorable state of grade school education in this country means many students graduate without every hearing about the Anti-Federalists. It may surprise you, but the Constitution was not the original foundational document of this nation. The Articles of Confederation and Perpetual Union</a> preceded the Constitution. The Articles of Confederation established a weak confederal government. The keyword here is weak. The Articles were written by people breaking away from a monarchy and had zero interest in establishing another one.
After Shay's Rebellion, the politicians of the time decided the Articles needed some modification. Each of the 13 states sent delegates to Philadelphia with a mandate to make wanted improvements. The delegates decided to exceed their mandate and chose to write an entirely new document, the Constitution. During the process of replacing the weak federal government with the powerful one that lords over us today, there was fierce debate. Those in favor of the Constitution performed an early example of American propaganda by calling themselves Federalists. This left those opposed to the Constitution being called Anti-Federalists. In reality, The Anti-Federalists favored continuing federalism whereas the Federalists favored weakening the power of the 13 states and empowering the federal government.
During this debate, the Anti-Federalists warned of several dangers of the proposed Constitution. The warning that's the subject of this post is that the position of president, which was practically inconsequential under the Articles, would become a virtual monarchy under the Constitution. Under the Articles of Confederation, the presidency was largely administrative. The position carried no executive power. Meanwhile, the Constitution would grant the presidency tremendous powers, including executive power.
With over 200 years of hindsight, we can see that the Anti-Federalists were correct. If the presidency today had the power granted by the Articles of Confederation, nobody would give two shits about who occupied the office because that person would hold no power. But we suffer under the yoke of the Constitution, which grants the president tremendous power. Moreover, that power has been steadily increasing since the Constitution was established.
The rhetoric we're seeing this election is ridiculous. But it's based on a fear that stems from the fact that the president has too much power. Rather than arguing over whose boot will tread slightly lighter, voters should be arguing over ways to weaken the presidency or, at the very least, over ways to prevent the position from becoming more powerful than it already is.
We were warned yet we do nothing now that the warning has undeniably come to pass.