I’ve been banging on for some time now about how the USA is a dying empire inhabiting the footprint of a long-destroyed nation, and will eventually split apart into at least three separate constituents. I have gotten considerable pushback on this subject from some readers, most notably the Excruciator Majoris of the Evil Legion of Evil, LTC Tom Kratman, who argue that there will be one strong American nation after a culling that will be a bloodbath on a scale never seen before.

Time will tell who is right. The crux of the disagreement comes down to whether there will be a mass slaughter of the Left at the hands of the Right, or the Left will simply establish new (and likely totally dysfunctional) nations along the coastlines and the current “blue” counties.

Those in favour of my position argue that the old majority-white America is gone, and what is left in its place is not even close to recognisably “American” anymore, and therefore separation is inevitable.

Those in favour of the alternative say that Americans are intermingled right down to the zipcode level and will not separate quickly or easily, with neighbour pitted against neighbour and brother against brother. The result will instead be that the streets will run red with blood as old scores and grievances are settled with fists and bullets, and that the Left will come out very much on the losing end.

To be clear, I have no quarrel with the idea that there will be a truly epic civil war that will make the War Between the States look like a gentlemanly disagreement by comparison – and the latter war cost America 10% of its population, over 600,000 dead, at the time. The next war will, in my estimate, cost America roughly 30% of its population – which at this point in time amounts to over 90 MILLION people.

That is more than died in both World Wars, combined.

Dear Lord, please prove me wrong.

To my considerable sadness, it looks as though we’re going to see these two postulated futures put to the test in fairly short order – as this news item from Oregon indicates:

A Republican state senator in Oregon told police to show up ready for a fight if they moved to enforce Democrat Governor Kate Brown’s order to compel attendance for a contentious vote on climate-change legislation.

Democrats have a supermajority in the state legislature, but cannot approve a bill that would impose carbon caps in the name of combating climate change without at least the presence of Republican lawmakers. After days of heated debate, the GOP chose to boycott the vote, prompting Governor Brown to authorize Oregon State Police to round up the senators and force them to participate.

Oregon Republican Senator Brian Boquist was having none of it, telling a reporter in response to the governor’s threat that he would not be a political prisoner, and said the state troopers should prepare for a shootout.

Boquist previously warned the governor that “hell is coming to visit you personally” if she issued the order to police. Some Republican lawmakers have reportedly left the state altogether.

Governor Brown released a statement on Thursday denouncing the GOP walkout and explained her decision to compel a quorum, or the minimum number of senators required for votes to go forward in the Oregon State Capitol.

“The Senate Democrats have requested the assistance of the Oregon State Police to bring back their colleagues to finish the work they committed to push forward” Brown said. “As the executive of the agency, I am authorizing the State Police to fulfill the Senate Democrats’ request.”

Brown added it was “absolutely unacceptable” that the lawmakers would “turn their backs on their constituents.”

The bill, which remains stalled due to the Republican walkout, would have implemented a cap and trade program to limit carbon emissions in the state, and allow companies to exchange emission “allowances.”

Oregon GOP Representative Carl Wilson said the bill would “punish” Oregon’s workers for the “reckless” environmental policies of other countries, while Republican Senate Leader Herman Baertschiger Jr. argued it would only represent “Portland and the environmental community, not rural Oregonians.”

Time will tell whether this is just bluster on the part of the Republicans. The track record of Republicans and conservatives in resisting the Left is abysmal, and that is putting it very charitably. Every time that conservatives have been pushed to the point of shoving, they have failed to shove back.

Whether we are talking about preserving States’ rights, keeping a government shutdown in place until Democrats stop being whiny crybabies, stopping safe-space culture in its tracks, or even something as simple as preserving the ladies’ room and keeping mentally ill tranny freaks out of them, Republicans have consistently caved, cucked, and cadged.

They are terrified that someone somewhere might be OFFENDED by people standing up for their rights, and as such had condemned themselves to irrelevance – right up until the glorious and magnificent (but flawed) reign of His Astral Majesty, the God-Emperor Donaldus Triumphus Magnus.

I put the odds of the Republican minority lawmakers of Oregon knuckling under and meekly coming to the state assembly at better than 70%. But, I could easily be wrong. I have been before and will be again. We shall see, but given that some of the state’s lawmakers simply up and fled rather than stand and fight, tells me everything I need to know.

I do not blame them for running, by the way. I really don’t. Those men (and, probably, a few women) likely looked at the bill under consideration and decided that discretion was the better part of valour; it wasn’t worth getting into a confrontation with the State’s enforcement arm that could easily escalate. And that’s fine, a climate-change bill that is as idiotic as the people who created it probably isn’t worth getting arrested over.

That is not the main point here, though.

No, the main point is that we now see the extent to which the Left will go to enforce the progressive agenda.

Think about it. The Daemoncrat Governor of Oregon, a woman, is literally telling State troopers to enforce the executive branch’s will at gunpoint and arrest anyone who disagrees with her.

For all of their ridiculous talk about how the Right is full of Nazis, this is what the Nazis actually did back in the day. This is what the rat-bastard Commies [20,000-word rant about evil scum-sucking dipshit Communists deleted for sake of brevity] did to those who disagreed with them.

And this is what is coming, one way or another, for everyone in the USA.

Understand this, brothers, and understand it well. The Left will not allow you any personal freedoms that conflict with their agenda of Social Justice Uber Alles. They will use all methods at their disposal and will aim for raw, naked power to achieve it. Their own brightest luminaries have said as much.

This latest incident in Oregon – which has seen more than one such standoff between armed factions in recent years – may well blow over and prove to be “a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing“.

But I have an uneasy feeling that this will be but one of many flashpoints between us and the Left – and sooner or later, one of those flashpoints is going to ignite something genuinely explosive.

When that happens… May God help us all.

(Oh, and in case anyone is wondering – when it comes to a fight between Iron Man and Captain Marvel, I’m on Tony Stark’s side, every time.)