Here we are

 I have been writing about the right-wing stealth takeover of our nation for five years — which was when I became aware of “Democracy in Chains: The Deep History of the Radical Right's Stealth Plan for America,” by award-winning Duke University historian Nancy MacLean. Dr. MacLean’s exposure of the far-reaching conspiracy should be required reading for every journalist in this country. That’s not to say others shouldn’t read. I point this out because a scan of the media ecosystem informs me the of Fourth Estate’s surprise and confusion at the Trump administration’s blitzkrieg on the federal government.

Co-president Elon Musk and Co-President Donald Trump are only the face of this right-wing libertarian movement. The radical attack on the progress in the Twentieth Century had its seeds planted with the white supremacy elites of the former Dixie states rebelling against the famous SCOTUS 1954 Brown v. Board of Education ruling. It struck down school segregation by calling separate equal unconstitutionally unequal. God forbid that the children of the scions of former slave owners should rub shoulders with our Black brethren.

Fast forward to the 1970s, thanks to MacLean, we learn an obscure economist named James McGill Buchanan put forth “public choice theory,” a theory that essentially says “political decision-making and public economics. Traditional economic theory explains in great detail how consumers make decisions regarding purchase of goods, choice of work, product investments etc. In a series of studies, Buchanan has developed a corresponding theory of decision-making in the public sector. His best-known work is Calculus of Consent (1962), written in collaboration with Gordon Tullock,” according to www.nobelprize.org/prizes/economic-sciences/1986/buchanan/facts/>.

The bottom-line was to change was to make governments smaller and to change the rules of the governing game, particularly the U.S. Constitution. And while Buchanan, who died in 2013, eventually was awarded the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences in 1986, he got the attention of Charles and David Koch in the 1970s. While plenty of right-wing movement occurred in the 1960s and 1970s, the real push came when Charles Koch and Buchanan teamed up.

MacLean’s book as a key paragraph that describes how Koch saw the world:

“That sense of intellectual and even ethical superiority to others may help explain why Charles Koch bypassed Milton Friedman to make common cause with the more uncompromising James Buchanan. Koch referred to Friedman and the rest of the post–Hayek Chicago school of economics he led, as well as to Alan Greenspan, as ‘sellouts to the system.’ Why? Because they sought ‘to make government work more efficiently when the true libertarian should be tearing it out at the root.’ They actually tried to help government deliver better results, which could only prolong the disease. Koch believed that only in its ‘radical, pure form,' without compromise, would the ideas ‘appeal to the brightest, most enthusiastic, most capable people.’ (Is it any wonder, then, that his allies would now rather bring down the government than improve it?)”

That paragraph explains what we’re seeing now. Yes, the radical right wants to destroy government and Trump and Musk are pawns of the billionaire class — willing pawns, of course — but only the tip of the iceberg. You can flesh out the story with these other books:

“Dark Money” by Jane Mayer; 

“Shadow Network: Media, Money, and the Secret Hub of the Radical Right” by Anne Nelson; 

“The Power Worshippers: Inside the Dangerous Rise of Religious Nationalism” by Katherine Stewart; 

“Jesus and John Wayne: How White Evangelicals Corrupted a Faith and Fractured a Nation,” by Kristin Kobes Du Mez; and, 

“Hiding in Plain Sight” and “They Knew” by Sarah Kendzior.

There is no way I can summarize these six books into a cohesive whole. I can only lay out the information and emphasize that the media and Democratic Party have failed us. This long-term strategy needed strong pushback and full exposure in the 1960s. Instead, the juggernaut rolled on. And here we are. There will be no compromises from these fascists. The billionaire class has this country right where it wants it: on the ropes in a cold civil war. The endgame is a Convention of the States under Article V of the United States Constitution and rolling back our foundational document to the 1850s. It will leave only two functions for government — militarized law enforcement and national defense.