Hearts and Minds, by Robert Gore

The regime has lost the hearts and minds that matter.

. . . What do we mean by the Revolution? The War? That was no part of the revolution; it was only an Effect and Consequence of it. The Revolution was in the Minds of the the People, and this was effected from 1760 to 1775, in the course of fifteen years, before a drop of blood was drawn at Lexington. . . .

John Adams, letter to Thomas Jefferson, August 24, 1815

“Hearts and minds” became a cliché during the Vietnam War. Somebody noticed that many of the Vietnamese had no particular enthusiasm for either the War for Freedom, Democracy, and Domino Prevention or its American sponsors. Thus began a trademark U.S. effort to win the hearts and minds of the skeptical and the outright opposed. It was based on a belief that’s been the undoing of centuries of rulers: that “the masses” can be swayed by the right combination of propaganda, threats, repression, and fear.

The Americans had lost Vietnamese hearts and minds before most of them had even arrived. The 1954 Geneva accords partitioned Vietnam at roughly the 17th parallel and provided for reunification after elections in 1956. The U.S. government realized that communist Ho Chi Minh, a popular hero for his leadership of the resistance against the Japanese in World War II and the French afterwards, would easily win. The promised elections were not held.

That decision kneecapped the next 19 years of U.S. “saving democracy” propaganda. Even when a government controls the precious narrative, actions speak louder than words; hypocrisy’s stench overwhelms the honeyed propaganda. The man on the street, publicly lauded but privately disparaged by the ruling class, realizes the truth and doesn’t forget it.

Back home, the U.S. government has been losing hearts and minds for decades. The show-trial verdict against Donald Trump will push more people into the ranks of the permanently disillusioned, and that group already numbers in the tens of millions.

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The almost automatic faith the government enjoyed through the Depression, World War II, and the years that followed suffered its first big hit with the Kennedy assassination and the Warren Commission whitewash. The Vietnam War took its toll, exacerbated by the draft and the treatment of returning soldiers.

Since Vietnam, the government and the ruling class have destroyed sentient Americans’ belief in their probity and effectiveness. Watergate, abandonment of the gold standard, double-digit inflation, Iran-Contra, serial financial crises, the Clintons’ scandals, the dot-com bust, 9/11 and the string of disastrous Middle East interventions it kicked off, the Patriot Act, the housing bust, too big to fail, Snowden’s revelations, and the rancid legislative maneuvers used to sneak through Obamacare set the table for Trump in 2016. His election kicked the lose-hearts-and-minds project into overdrive.

In their vicious arrogance and myopic stupidity, the regime and its media minions didn’t grasp that Trump rode a wave of those who treat anything they condemn as an endorsement and reject anything they endorse. “Deplorables” became a badge of honor. (Now another has been bestowed—“convicted felon”—already gracing T-shirts, baseball hats, banners, and memes.) Trump’s election was the Lexington moment for a Revolution that had already been effected in “the Minds of the People.” The regime recognized its significance before the revolutionaries did and even before Trump took office set out to destroy him.

Soviet secret police chief Lavrentiy Beria reportedly said, “Give me the man and I will give you the case against him.” The regime had its man, and they tried to build case after case against him. Mueller and Russiagate came up empty, as did two impeachment efforts. Ultimately, they employed another Soviet stratagem—an obviously rigged election—to at least temporarily vanquish Trump. With the January 6 persecutions, they went after both Trump and his supporters.

Trump is a Bobo doll and he’s popped back up to a sizable and undoubtedly understated lead in this year’s election polls, aided by the repeated blunders of the most inept administration in history. Even Biden’s media minions haven’t been much help. Like the regime’s, their credibility is gone.

The only ones who still believe are the village idiots. The regime has waged lawfare against Trump with about the same success as its Ukrainian proxies have had against Russia. Smirking Joe Biden and regime toadies should enjoy the verdict and sentencing, it’s liable to be their Kherson moment (one of the few battles Ukraine won).

Trump may well win this election from a jail cell. His campaign donations are overloading his website and there are reports he’s raised $200 million since the verdict. It’s no longer just Trump supporters versus never-Trump Republicans and Democrats. It’s fair play and elementary justice versus tyrannical law and rank injustice, amplified by that inner scream of outrage every decent human being feels when confronted by manifest evil. Millions are asking themselves: who’s next? We’re all surveilled 24/7, and when law is a charade, as Beria noted, anyone can be persecuted.

Speaking of the election, will the Democrats steal this one, too? In their all-consuming quest for power, unchecked by any consideration of morality, they’ll certainly try. They may succeed. If they don’t, there will be widespread rioting. If they do, there won’t be, but the ranks of those who have concluded that the system is irretrievably corrupt and beyond repair will swell. If the Democrats conclude they can’t steal the election, that Trump’s support is too overwhelming, we may face a “national emergency” that will prevent it. The deadly germ thing won’t work a second time, but perhaps nuclear war with Russia. Anything to hold on to power.

It’s a sign of pervasive cynicism that “Uniparty” and “Deep State” have become commonly used terms. The permanently disillusioned and cynical are a multitude, and many of them—seeing what’s coming—have decided to “let it burn.” How large is the subset whose hearts and minds have moved to outright opposition to the regime—hang the consequences—or will do so when the time is right? No one knows, there are no announcements on the Internet, but it grows larger by the hour.

Revolutionaries have the debt’s compounding interest working in their favor. The financial crisis now underway will effloresce with its attendant impoverishment and bankruptcy. Those who had too much to lose to revolt will suddenly have nothing to lose but their chains. That’s when the revolution that is already in “the Minds of the People” is most likely to go kinetic.

The regime’s dependence on fiat debt renders it a toilet-paper tiger. Revolutionaries will go to school on both guerrilla warfare and modern war as waged by the Russians in Ukraine. The U.S. military has lost repeatedly to guerrillas who have not had the firepower, resources, or expertise that American insurgents will have. For leadership, the revolutionary force will draw on active and retired military who take their oaths seriously and have experience in insurgent warfare.

Ukraine is demonstrating that modern war is not just waged on battlefields, but in cyberspace, across electronic command and control systems, and against civilian infrastructure. Even on the battlefield, UAVs are reshaping combat as $500 drones take out $10 million dollar tanks. Robots will soon be another disruptive force. America has more than its share of hackers, electronics experts, technical adepts who can put together drones and robots, and other revolutionaries who will wage war on the government in new and imaginative ways. A society as complex and interlinked as ours, ruled by a slow and stupid government, has innumerable pressure points.

The regime will have the support of its dependents, but those net drains will be unsupportable ballast, jettisoned under severe financial stress. The regime has lost the hearts and minds that matter; the Revolution has been effected. It will have the overt or covert support of millions. The regime is toast.