Memo to Mr. Harrison #2

 Two days ago, I asked the Chair of the Democratic National Committee to lead an full-court press against the terror/tyranny that is both implicit and explicit in the bannon/trump et al attempted coup. Democrats are in a highly paradoxical position, having enlightened policies and an approach to government that respects civil order and institutions as well as the players on that states, while at the same time being hamstrung internally and externally both by their own “wokeness” and the culture’s seduction to their own addiction to the politics of personal destruction and demonization freely translated as “weaponization”.

Just as NATO is caught between their shared (at least partially) commitment to defend Ukraine in the face of the Russian state terrorism, and yet refrains from treating Ukraine as a full-fledged member of their organization, fearing the spark that ignites a third world war, with obvious nuclear deployments, so too the Democrats are in a similar bind, between their ambition and campaign to hold on to the seats in both the House and Senate, (or even to increase those numbers) and the risks of adopting an open-warfare approach to attacking the opposition, fearing (or at least envisioning) an all-out political war that threatens the very stability of the American body politic and the union itself.

Fear of the nuclear option has been the guiding light in geopolitics for at least the last half of the twentieth century, and into the first two decades of the twenty-first. And while there is evidence that that fear has acted as a brake on political aggression on steroids, it has not prevented or precluded the development and deployment of biological/chemical weapons. Nor has it prevented the surge in terrorism some of it seeded in religious nationalism and some of it seeded in national anarchy. It has taken the U.S. decades to begin to include ‘home-grown’ terror as a political and legal threat, after 9/11, when their focus was on international terrorism. Such is the avoidance/denial/wish-hoping of a nation who finds it very hard to contemplate and then to address the possibility that its own people are, were and will continue to be potential and actual terrorists. Is it possible that now that that delusion has been debunked, and everyone knows that a person became president through American votes who was/is/and continues to be committed to the dismantling of the American institutional state as we know it, it might also be possible for the American political class, led by the Democrats, to open to and to embrace the previously unthinkable notion that such a cabal does have detailed and demonstrable links to forces around the world that are committed to the surreptitious and also the overt undermining of the American state, in particular and in general.

Finding the opponent’s Achilles heel, and then exploiting that weakness is a war tactic and strategy as old as time itself. And doing that deceptively, while the opponent ‘sleeps’ is also part of the code of warfare. No doubt, most political strategists in most countries are familiar with The Art of War by Sun Tzu. Not only brains and brawn are essential for a successful conflict strategy, but ‘victory without direct fighting is the most advantageous way to win. And in order to win, one has to have the support of those ‘warriors’ through clear rules, discipline, a consciousness that if the flame of any campaign burns too hot for too long it will burn itself out as protracted battles without success will wear out the resources available. Using the enemy’s resources to sustain your forces, and destabilizing the opponent is more important than killing him are two more of the arrows in the Sun Tzu arsenal. Weakening the opponent’s resolve will evoke respect for victory won through integrity than through total destruction. One of the best ways to establish a defence is to appear formless, while forcing the opponent to follow the path you create for them can generate momentum. The classical conditioning of a dangled carrot to convince them of ‘faux gain’ will provide evidence of their next move….

Taking the perspective of the battlefield, currently, from north of the 49^th parallel, it would seem that the last five years, at least, have witnessed a highly effectivetdeployment of the strategies and tactics Sun Tzu laid out centuries ago, by the Republican-Putin-Orban-Bolsonaro-et al…forces to destabilize the United States of America, with implicit and explicit help from China, Brexit, nationalist populism, the internet, and the lack of preparation of the American body politic.

In a nation in which the geopolitical theatre is only a headline in an extreme incident, without the undergirding cognitive and creative energy of the population, and the speed of change far outstrips the glacial-knee-jerk oscillation of the political class, glacial in its traditions and knee-jerk in its hourly/daily reactions, there is much work to be done for the Democrats to mount an offensive/defensive plan both to win the November mid-terms and to prevent the decapitation of the American body politic and the respective institutions that provide the engine and the compass and the wheel for the ship of state.

Leadership on the world stage requires strength, energy, creativity and courage. It does not require or respect dominance. Nevertheless, internal/national dominance has already been achieved by the deconstructionist cabal conceived and scripted and emboldened by men like bannon who is himself now both willingly and enthusiastically participating in his own ‘show-trial’ while calling the trial itself on the part of the justice department a show-trial. How blatant, flagrant and narcissistic a model do the American people need to disqualify this approach and the people who prosletize the approach from ever taking charge of the reins of power?

Nevertheless, while such a proposition may seem obvious on this side of the U.S.-Canadian border, inside the war-room of the DNC, these observations are little more than idle chatter, fodder for the enemy to chortle over contemptuously.

Indeed, it is the contempt of these people for the very ‘stability and trustworthiness’ and legitimacy of the institutions of democracy, however inadequate and suspect they may be, and their determination to replace them with the raw, indiscriminate and abusive deployment of their own power, in all of its nefarious applications (suffocate the environment, deny free choice of women, deny access to the ballot by minorities, worship and enrich the rich, deprive the underclasses, barricade the borders and transform democracy into dictatorship, ‘for one hundred years’ according to bannon)…that must be the primary motivation of the Democrats.

And their infighting, whether initiated and sustained by the right or the moderates cannot and must not be tolerated for the sake of the country. This notion that the country precedes the party, and certainly the individual, the rights guaranteed by the nation and the opportunities envisioned for all can no longer be merely a slogan, some kind of wishful dreaming. The fight, just as in Ukraine, has come home to the front door of each and every American, Canadian and citizen of western democracies. And the Ukrainians are carrying the torch, and losing their lives on our behalf.

For us, each of us, our duty to uphold our right to exist in a free and open and respecting community, both locally and internationally, includes those driveway signs “we stand with Ukraine dotting the highways in Ontario, and the flags on poles in towns in Ontario, and families being integrated into the cities of Ontario, and the weapons being shipping from Canada to Ukraine…and it also includes the Democrats committing to such a creative and courageous strategy and tactics and attempt what has been so difficult to envision previously.

The intersect between a system’s capacity to deliver strategies and tactics in a unified force field, without sparking the holocaust that everyone imagines, at the geopolitical level, and at the constituency level, the state level and the national level of American politics, is hurdle needing to be jumped.

Like the General Relativity Theory and the Quantum Mechanics Theory in physics that are considered irreconcilable, and yet warrant intense study and potential resolution, potentially through the new Quantum Gravity Institute, so too this proposition that the application of new and steroidal-injected political muscle, (not necessarily rhetoric) need not lead to the total destruction of the democratic system need immediate resolution.

And the best instrument, with the resources, the need, the perspective of the landscape and the ‘weather’ and with the most creative and courageous personnel resources in the world, to carry out such a mission, with the help of the waiting army of supporters in all political persuasions and parties, is the Democratic Party of the United States.

And yet, Mr. Harrison, no pressure eh?