The Cope Of Legitimacy’s Apparent Demise

When you lose institutions, you don’t suddenly win by people not “trusting” them

I often hear that even if the Right loses an election or cedes some sector of life entirely to the Left, not all is lost because the system loses legitimacy as a result. If people stop trusting the system altogether, then it will collapse … or something. 

The details are murky, but the whitepill is assured. 

One example of this genre is coping over the possibility that all judges in the future will brainwashed liberals. Some say this wouldn’t be that big of a deal because it would eliminate trust in the legal system. 

This isn’t a win in any shape or form. It doesn’t matter if some people declare they don’t trust the legal system. It can still put you in jail. Most prisoners don’t trust the legal system either; that’s not a problem for the system. So long as the population is reasonably content and there are no real alternatives, the “regime” can keep on going regardless of how blackpilled right-wingers are.

For many years, those at the fringes of the Right insisted that we need to “wake up” the people to how bad things are. They needed to lose all hope in the normal state of affairs to adopt radical solutions. The only way to achieve this situation was through electoral defeats and a complete left-wing takeover of the institutions. With this accomplished, Middle Americans would then try to overthrow their corrupt rulers and establish a much better form of government–or so these right-wingers wish. 

Ordinary conservatives are convinced that the government is evil, but they’re not about to start a revolution. Polls illustrate their distaste of the elite and major institutions. Nearly a quarter of Trump supporters think Democrats are importing foreigners to demographically replace the white majority. Sixty-three percent of Republicans believe the 2020 election was stolen. Just 11 percent of Republicans trust the federal government while a quarter of the party believe satanic pedophiles run the government.. 

Trump’s rhetoric also reflects a strong hostility to those in charge. He promises to liberate America from migrant occupation and calls his political opponents “vermin.” Supporters give this material thunderous applause at his rallies – it  isn’t diminishing his support.

It’s clear Middle Americans already distrust the powers that be.

This evidence strongly contrasts the meme that our people are too nice and trusting towards those who run the country. They’re not gladly accepting what’s happening to the country because of some deep ideological attachment or anything like that. They simply accept things because they have too much to lose and see no other alternatives.

Let’s take the example of January 6. The FBI tossed hundreds of people into federal prison for the offense of walking around the Capitol without permission. This outraged many Americans and caused them to lose faith in the justice system. This disillusionment’s only tangible result is that conservatives stopped protesting. Seeing what happened to J6ers, they felt it was too much of a risk. Rather than pushing them towards “radical” action, it blackpilled them from a perfectly normal political activity.

Granted, street protests aren’t as important to the Right as they are to the Left. But one shouldn’t expect a revolution to emerge from the protest-shy. 

Even if people think there’s something deeply wrong with their institutions, they’ll still follow along if those same powers can take things away from them. Much of the Right is composed of people with things to lose–a good job, a home, a family, etc. All that can be taken away if they decide to go down a radical path. Just ask the J6ers. Most people’s primary concerns are those that immediately impact them. A stranger’s arrest for hate speech will perturb conservatives, but it won’t upset them enough to throw away their livelihood. 

These conservatives also don't have an idea of what else they should do here–and no one is offering them any alternatives. Besides vague discussions of “parallel networks” (which are often left undefined), the advocates of the accelerated delegitimization strategy assume the people will suddenly rise up one day and overthrow the government. That’s a wild dream I wouldn’t bet on.

America, with all of its problems, still has unprecedented prosperity and amusements for its citizenry. If people feel normal politics are hopeless, the vast majority aren’t going to turn to some violent solution. They’re going to hunker down in their homes and focus on their personal lives and hobbies. Instead of getting worked up about elections, they’ll worry about grilling and their favorite team’s draft prospects. Knowing the law and other institutions are against their right-wing politics, they’ll do even more to hide them from the public and be even less inclined to act on them. 

The only way for legitimacy to actually be threatened is if Middle Americans experience a rapid decline in their quality of life. It would have to be worse than the Great Recession. Think starvation-level poverty. Additionally, the state would have to weaken to the point where it can no longer effectively curtail threats to it. If everyone is still going to jail for walking around the Capitol, it’s not threatened. But if the state loses its ability to enforce its laws and protect people, then normal Americans will look elsewhere for those who can.

It doesn’t matter if you tweet that you longer recognize the legitimacy of the government and our most important institutions. They still have the power to tax you, arrest you, take your kids away, and even send you off to war. That’s real power, and the only way to influence it is through the political process.

You can choose not to care, but that isn’t a revolutionary act. It only cedes power to your enemies.