Political theater and the 4-step march to serfdom

This play is as old as government, and it's called "divide and conquer". It works like this:

Step 1: Setup a two-party system in which both parties are essentially the same. They do the same stuff, they're both filled with totalitarian control freaks, but their rhetoric is different so that they can appeal to different demographics. It's okay for them to say totally opposite things, they're politicians, so they won't do what they say anyway.

Step 2: Get a bunch of paid actors (that's all politicians are) on stage proclaiming some asinine, extreme nonsense that almost nobody would support. This gets people engaged and worried that the sky is falling.

Step 3: Get the other party to say slightly more reasonable, though still totalitarian, things. The people you got worried in step 2 will vote for the actors in step 3.

Step 4: Actors from step 3 come to power, and do what the actors in step 2 said they were going to.

Example 1: Gun confiscation - Obama vs. Trump

Obama is on record as being anti-gun. The city he hails from, Chicago, has some of the highest crime rates and simultaneously some of the most restrictive gun laws in the country. To anyone paying attention, those two tend to go together.

When he ran for president, and as president, he said all kinds of anti-gun things. But he never passed any laws that restricted gun ownership in any way. After all, the pro-freedom crowd were on their toes watching and fighting against any infringements. So instead, the establishment got Trump elected.

Trump, who went to the NRA and said "from my cold, dead hands", has since passed more gun control laws than Obama did. He banned bump stocks via executive decree without any due process (a violation of the 2nd and 5th amendments, an impeachable offense), and encouraged the passing of red flag laws on the state level. He may even succeed in passing them on the federal level.

How did he manage to do this? Because the people who voted for him, who bought into his rhetoric, let him. Because they thought a politician would actually do what they said they would do.

To summarize: Step 1 was making it seem like Trump was different from the other politicians. Step 2 was making the other politicians appear even crazier and more egomaniacal than he was. Step 3 was getting him elected. Step 4 was him doing the opposite of what he said he would.

Example 2: Gun confiscation - Beto vs. Republicans

Since then, the gun confiscation rhetoric has certainly ramped up. I guess the government is getting ready for something big.

So once again, with step 1 already complete and the Democrat vs. Republican false dichotomy firmly established, step 2 was easy: get paid actors like Beto to go out on stage and proclaim they were going to go door-to-door and confiscate American's guns. Oh look! A commie! Run for the hills!

Part of step 2 is also making it sound like this guy is actually significant. How do they do that? They play him all over the media. They invite him for interviews, get him involved in the democratic parties' debates, and plaster his wild and crazy totalitarian claims all over the internet.

Meanwhile, the truth is that not even democratic voters support him. When he started running for the presidential campaign, his ratings were around the 10% mark. Now he's at 2%. They've consistently fallen after every batshit crazy remark he's made. You'd think with all the attention he's getting, he'd be higher than in 7th place for the democratic presidential nominee.

Step 3 involves contrasting Trump, a verified anti-gun socialist nutjob, as some kind of viable political candidate. After all, with people like Beto wanting to take your guns, you just have to vote for Trump! It's like corraling sheep.

Step 3 also includes all the conservative mainstream news and youtube channels playing into the theatre by giving Beto time, saying they "won't comply", it's unconstitutional, yada yada yada. This guy gets 2% support from the democratic voters themselves. He's a complete nobody. The way you fight insane nobodies is by ignoring them, not giving them more and more attention.

And then, finally, after both the socialists and conservatives have sparred in the "who is less crazy" match, step 4 comes to pass and a seemingly less crazy candidate is elected, who then proceed to expand the government's anti-gun program, exactly what the people who voted for him wanted to avoid.

The way you get socialist policies passed is by getting a Republican into office to pass them, because then there's no resistance.

Like Rand Paul said a while back, "When the Democrats are in power, the Republicans are the conservative party. When the Republicans are in power, there is no conservative party."

This is all political theater people. Wake up!