The day after the January 6 election integrity rally was infiltrated by FBI provocateurs, attacked by Capitol Police, and slandered as an “insurrection,” I was one of the first writers in America reckless enough to tell the truth. I wrote a column which appeared here on Jan. 8, 2021, “The Republic Has No Clothes: Lessons from Storming the Capitol.”

Knowing that lickspittle anti-Trump toadies (including some former friends) were already smearing critics of election fraud as members of a “Trump insanity pact,” I purposely made the piece as highbrow as possible to intimidate them into turning snobbery into silence. It worked. None of them ever mentioned me or contacted me again.

But those literary references weren’t just for decoration; I was making a point. We are living through something like a Greek tragedy, or a Kafka novel, or The Matrix:

Our efforts to demand an honest election were thwarted at every turn, like a hero in a Sophocles play trying to dodge his own destruction. The Deep State, like the Fates, slams the door and nails shut the window, then sits back and mocks its victims as they scramble. But to us that poignant spectacle of Americans defending their votes should evoke both terror and pity. For our countrymen and our families.

That sense of being the plaything of vastly powerful forces toying with hapless citizens has become much sharper with each new savage prison term for a peaceful protestor at the Capitol or at some abortion clinic, each fresh “lawfare” attack on Trump’s attorneys and advisors. As Julie Kelly documents, the judges and prosecutors in multiple January 6 cases are openly saying that they want to make examples of these hapless defendants to “send a message” to the rest of the citizenry. The message? Keep quiet, keep your head down, and maybe we’ll leave you in peace.

They Will Never Stop

Or do you want to end up like Peter Navarro? Or John Eastman. Or Sidney Powell. Or Mike Flynn. Or David Clements. Or Steve Bannon. Or any of the other dissenters who made enough noise that the full weight of the State and its prosecutors, litigators, and IRS auditors came down on their heads.

Remember that the lawless case  scared Deep State denizens made up against Mike Flynn was blown apart in court by Sidney Powell, to the point that the Department of Justice had to withdraw it — but the Obama-appointed judge wouldn’t allow it. He served as both judge and prosecutor, for months, until at last he was forced to stop that farce.

Never fear! Fresh subpoenas are still being served against General Flynn. And the System is still persecuting Sidney Powell, both for doing a good job as his attorney and for blowing the whistle on election fraud.

Like the liquid metal cyborg in Terminator II, these Furies will never stop. They can change shape, take varying forms, and adapt to every reverse. The sheer, implacable will to destroy, fueled by bottomless cash reserves and a ruthless hunger to punish those who resist their power grabs, guarantees another prosecution, another frivolous lawsuit, another attempt to disbar, another doxxing or IRS audit.

The Protean Pretexts for Violent Mobs

The left has completely abandoned any pretense of respect for the Constitution and the rule of law. The reason the organized mobs with shifting, Protean pretexts (George Floyd, “Palestine,” or “trans visibility”) detest our flag and attack statues of our Founders is clear and simple. It has nothing to do with slavery, “systemic racism,” or the safety of Gaza’s voters for Nazi-style genocide in Israel. They hate any limits to their exercise of power, and so they want to demolish them. Just as Marx identified religion, the family, and private property rights as the three key barriers to achieving Communism, the Left today hates citizenship, religion, and the family.

But above all it hates the United States Constitution, especially the First and Second Amendments — which together delineate our rights, and allow us the weapons to personally defend them. Now that the Left no longer controls the Supreme Court, and can’t use it to torture the texts into saying whatever it wants, our elites are spitting with rage. They’ve dropped the mask and are ready to rule through the naked abuse of power. And the fear that they count on spreading through all of us.

Just as the Nazis occupying France would take out innocent hostages and shoot them in the public square and the Red Chinese would hold “struggle sessions” to humiliate and terrorize dissidents, the Left now corrupts our courts and perverts the mission of every agency of government.

Leftists will only remember why the rule of law was important in the first place if they suffer for trashing it. Even if it goes against our natures and seems a bit petty, we have to make them pay. Not for made-up crimes, but real ones. And they have committed them by the thousand. As our own Daniel Street points out:

Republicans have plenty of power in state after state all over the country. Right now, probably 200 or 300 Republican DAs could investigate and indict Democrat campaign bundlers for a host of violations of state campaign finance laws, but no one to my knowledge has brought a single case. (A host of US Attorneys could bring similar federal charges for federal crimes.)

The Fulton County DA brought a mega-indictment against President Trump and over a dozen other people, many of whom are high profile, including the 2020 Georgia State GOP chairman. Another 30 people, including statewide elected officials in Georgia, are unindicted coconspirators. Now, that case is complete, utter rubbish, but do you think for one second a Republican DA in a red county anywhere would bring such charges, even if the charges had merit? The answer is no.

Republicans better start getting aggressive and bring the Left to justice, or this will never stop. The difference is, the Left gets free pass after free pass for actual crimes, while Republicans are being charged with nonsense.

All of the NGOs submitting illegitimate voter registrations are violating the Voting Rights Act (criminal penalties up to five years per count). The campaign bundlers laundering foreign cash and other illegal contributions by attributing hundreds of contributions to people who never gave anyone a dime are all subject to prosecution for state and federal violations.

Hundreds of Deep State denizens must be imprisoned for decades, so that the very prospect of lawfare makes leftists’ faces turn pale and sets their hands trembling. They must learn that the price of Pearl Harbor is Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

Or else they’ll just bide their time, refine their tactics, and come after us again.

John Zmirak is a senior editor at The Stream and author or coauthor of ten books, including The Politically Incorrect Guide to Immigration and The Politically Incorrect Guide to Catholicism. His newest book is No Second Amendment, No First.