American politics is on the verge of a new Civil War, but it won’t be about Red and Blue states, but rather about the ideology of who the government’s master really should be.

“As I listened to President Trump and Secretary Kennedy today discuss the new executive order on prescription drugs, I couldn’t help but get a sense that we are in a moment again in which the government is in a battle over its identity. The bureaucracy and the institutions of power, like Congress, want to keep things as they have always been, and the new administration seems to have other ideas about whom the government is there to serve. President Trump has accomplished a lot in his first hundred days, but nearly all of it, save the silliness about the Gulf of America, has yet to be enacted by Congress.”

— Aaron Everitt

Watching Secretary Kennedy’s press conference yesterday with Donald Trump was fascinating to take in. It wasn’t because of the subject matter in particular, but because it highlights a very fundamental moment in the pathways of choice ahead for government. If I have learned anything from following the Kennedy campaign for the last two years, it is that the language that most politicians and people in the political media use is a useless tossed salad of words with a dozen layers of definition intended to make clarifying stances about anything in policy wholly ineffective. As I listened to Secretary Kennedy discuss prescription drug pricing, I could almost hear the libertarian podcast jockeys blustering on their keyboards about how price controls are not the government’s business. Simultaneously, I could hear the AOCs and Bernie Sanders of the world screaming about how the oligarchs are winning with this new overreaching executive order. Everything that happens now in Washington is said to be unsuitable by the people who are supposedly the most politically savvy of our citizens and media. No matter the issue, someone has a reason why it has to be defeated.

After years of watching it play out time and time again, I have no interest in hashing any of it out over on X. I don’t want to get in arguments with basement dwellers about how the libertarians are perpetually wrong about what they perceive about the current economic system, and how all of their ideas are useless in an flawlessly esoteric economic system. Their arguments have lost their luster for me.

I also don’t have any need to point out to the blue-no-matter-who crowd why Bernie and Co. are screaming for defeat of the very fulcrum of their political movement. All of it is theater, maybe bordering on keyfabe; manufactured nonsense for donations and keeping oneself relevant with media presence. The entire apparatus has become a distraction from the reality that goes on in that slimy city.

The architecture of Washington tells me all I need to know about how the people in power think about a limited and federalist system of government. The temples they have erected to themselves indicate what they think of their importance, and what they think of the idea of limited government.

When I was in Washington in January for the Kennedy and Tulsi confirmation hearings, a friend and I rode around on rentable scooters. He had never been to Washington, and so I was able to play tour guide for our time together. It struck me then, as it had many times prior, how the Jefferson Memorial is so detached from the main elements of the Mall. As we made our way over there, exchanging scooters in the middle because of dead batteries due to its long distance away from the Mall, I told him to take note of how detached the monument is. Washington loves to speak about its Jeffersonian heritage, but in the place where the business happens, Jefferson is nowhere to be found. Capitol Hill and the White House are disinterested in Jefferson, and the monument is symbolic to me of what they all really think of Jefferson. “Keep him around for the soaring rhetoric, but never for the function of government.”

When the Civil War started in 1861, the real core issue that drove the separation was not about the stuff we are told in elementary school. The war was fundamentally about a vision for government and what it was to be in its function. In 1789, when George Washington and his Federalist Party took the reins of the new central government, there was a definitive struggle between the two intellectual centers that served in Washington’s cabinet. Alexander Hamilton was an advocate for a powerful, central government that was at the top of the power pyramid in the New World. Thomas Jefferson believed that the Constitution was inherently flawed in its abdication of power from the States to the central power. Ultimately, Jefferson resigned his post in the cabinet over the battle and started a second political party, the Democratic-Republicans, winning a mandate for his vision of government in the elections of 1800. He wanted to return the power that the states had surrendered and govern from the perspective that the Federal government took its direction and orders from the states. His fellow disciples, James Madison and James Monroe, won elections in 1808, 1812, 1816, and 1820. 24 years of Jeffersonian philosophy into the federal system changed the Federalist Party influence and the country governed itself from a limited central government perspective. For the next fifty years, the battle was between a vision for a strong central government and the Jeffersonian version of power, and Jeffersons version was the prevailing ethos.

As politics always goes, nothing remains permanent. After the election of 1824, each Congress would whittle a piece at a time away from the foundation of Jeffersonian philosophy of government. By 1860, the ontology of what kind of government the United States was going to have had boiled over in contention. Each compromise that leaders like Daniel Webster and Henry Clay would make with people like John C. Calhoun would ease up the tension momentarily amongst the factions to survive another election, but each inaction or compromise built in agitators that would continue to undermine the Jeffersonian vision of government. Naturally, the Southern states had a proclivity towards the Jefferson version because of their agrarian-based economy.

To be sure, there were abhorrent practices in the keeping of slaves and their treatment that contributed to their vision of government that, from today’s perspective, are worthy of defeat. However, despite the simplistic presentation of history we are told in our education camps, the real escalation towards war came when Lincoln, who was an empirest, won the presidential election of 1860. Lincoln wanted a strong federal government that would oversee all policy and economic interests of the nation. He was tired of the South having a seat at the table. He was fundamentally opposed to the states having their own autonomy and believed that America was ready to take on the mantle of global power. His actions and political decisions demonstrated his beliefs about it, and by April of 1861, the country was at war.

Tariffs that disproportionately burdened the Southern states, which were enacted by Congress in 1828 and 1832, were a thorn in the side of the Federal Government and its ability to function in the Jeffersonian philosophy of governance. All of the compromises that had been driven by the reaction to these tariffs were the agitators of the discontent that eventually caused the war. Jefferson’s version of government collided head-on with the Lincolnian vision for an America that was headed into the Twentieth Century.

The war started because the South decided to secede. They believed that the agreement between the states was no longer in their interests. Contrary to popular opinion, Lincoln did not invade Virginia to liberate the slaves, he did it to keep the Union intact. At the center of all of that was his desire to keep the country together for the money that Cotton provided in tariffs and revenue. The John Brown moments or the Frederick Douglass quotes that often surround the told history of the war are hindsight versions – absent of Mr. Lincoln’s actual motives. The winners tell the history, and the narrative about the impetus for war has been conveniently overshadowed and papered over by the victors for more altruistic and noble reasons. The South left because it stopped being listened to economically. They believed the compact between the states had been abused.

They Took Jefferson At his Word: “WHEN in the Course of human Events, it becomes necessary for one People to dissolve the Political Bands which have connected them with another…that whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these Ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its Foundation on such Principles, and organizing its Powers in such Form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness.”

As I listened to President Trump and Secretary Kennedy today discuss the new executive order on prescription drugs, I couldn’t help but get a sense that we are in a moment again in which the government is in a battle over its identity. The bureaucracy and the institutions of power, like Congress, want to keep things as they have always been, and the new administration seems to have other ideas about whom the government is there to serve. President Trump has accomplished a lot in his first hundred days, but nearly all of it, save the silliness about the Gulf of America, has yet to be enacted by Congress. The spending bill, the tariffs, the elimination of gender ideology or wokeness, DOGE, and the JFK files are all just done by fiat leadership. As easily as the pen has been put to paper by President Trump, the next president can revoke them all with a similar motion.

The Constitution, for those of you still hanging on to the fetish that it is still functional, provides the legislature with the power to enact the laws the people want. In the Jeffersonian style of government, the President used the executive order on a very limited basis because they believed that the power for legislating resided in the House and the Senate. In fact, from 1789 to 1860, a total of 43 executive orders were issued. After Abraham Lincoln’s presidency, the use of the executive order skyrocketed. In the presidencies since Lincoln, 15,370 Executive Orders have been issued. The two Roosevelt presidencies are high-water marks in the twentieth century, with TR issuing 1,081 and FDR issuing 3,721.

The Executive Order is not to be blamed as a dictatorial mechanism that empowers the Oligarchs. Instead, I find them to be a harbinger of issues within the government. Whenever Congress is uninterested in passing the laws that the people want, the number of Executive Orders skyrockets.

While this is not a new phenomenon, the moment we are in is different in one key sense. In the past, donations and money were a part of how Washington worked, but in our era, the politicians are not responding to the needs of the people because of the mercantile interests’ total chokehold on the apparatus. What was once a government that responded to the political winds of the people has now pivoted in its masterhood to the people who write the checks. They have done so unashamedly and without apology. They have become the corporate water carriers, who have disregarded the will of the voter entirely.

Since the decision surrounding Citizens United, the corporate influx of money in politics has grown exponentially. In 2000, the total money spent, including soft money and party expenditures, was roughly $700 million. Certainly a lot of money, and a record-setting sum for its time. Yet just 24 years later, the total was seven times greater than that of the Bush v. Gore election at 5.5 billion dollars. The entire cycle, including Congressional elections, was 15.5 billion dollars.

The corporations realized a very dark secret. The politics of our land could be purchased for the measly sum of about $35 per voter. Much cheaper than trying to do the heavy lifting of persuading people to consume their products on the open market. The political engine moves easily by creating manufactured division and getting people worked into a frenzy about a political candidate. Each of us who jumps onto social media to attack our unseen adversaries amplifies their $35 expenditure with vitriol and bombast. When DoubleEaglePatriot2020 keyboard snipes ExtraBlueEaglebinary69 with a zinger, he helps Pfizer buy the next politician on the cheap.

I vividly remember the election of 2012 in which Barack Obama ran against Mitt Romney. Considered by many, the first social media election, it was always surprising how much hyperventilating the election was causing. From any rational perspective, Romney was a nothingburger. He was a relatively moderate Republican who was basically a nice guy with no shot at winning. Yet millions of people were heavily invested in seeing his election. I remember thinking to myself at the time, “Why is there such a frenzy about this election? Who is actually advocating for Mitt Romney besides the media mouthpieces who claim that if Obama wins, it will be the end of America?” But there we were, whipped into a frenzy for less than a Domino’s pizza. The corporatists had their new vehicle to line their pockets and assure the preservation of their business within the overly administrative state.

This new political era in America is different from what it has been in the past. While the money and power brokers have always been a part of what goes on, this is the first time in our history that elections have stopped being about the political pressure that is exerted on the politicians, and are instead about how to advance mercantilism. The people are being used against each other to advance the agenda of the corporatists.

I Point to an Example From Just Last Week:

After President Trump nominated Dr. Casey Means to the Surgeon General’s post, the internet exploded with controversy and discontent. Laura Loomer-toons took to the socials to shout about the Marxist invasion of RFK Jr. and how he is being controlled by dark forces. His former running mate did the same. Soon enough, for less than the cost of a cup of coffee, Pharma had sewn the seeds of questions and discontent in the movement that had arguably helped Donald Trump win in a dominating fashion. All that good…gone in an instant. We played the part of Civil War soldiers. Marching across the proverbial Virginia border to fight for a cause we didn’t understand. It was masked in soaring rhetoric and angry tweets, but at the end of the day, the powerful had yet again convinced us that the fight was with each other and not with them.

You could hear the champagne corks popping.

The undercurrent of discontent among the people of this nation will, at some point, need to be galvanized in a different direction. The moment we see ourselves in is not one where the vision for America is between fundamentally ideological differences. Truthfully, the prescription drug stuff, in any other moment besides our current corporatist co-opted one, would be a slam dunk for any Congress to get done. But as I listened today to the person at the head of our government’s health institutions discuss how this executive order is a necessary policy change that will benefit the American people, he was exasperatingly having to do so because Congress is wholly and entirely bought by the interests. There is a sense that no matter what he might attempt to get accomplished in his agenda’s direction, it will be thwarted by the politicians, and seeds of discontent will be fomented by the funders of the lawmakers’ way of life.

Watching Senator Cassidy stand up on the Senate floor and discuss his willingness to confirm RFK Jr., only with a huge list of demands that handcuff the position, was proof enough to realize that Congress is uninterested in the voters of the United States. No amount of political pressure can be exerted by other congressional leaders, the President, or the people to move the needle for a man like Cassidy. Only the money and the payoffs for a cushy life and ease of remaining in power can make Cassidy jump. He will bluster and make it sound as if it is his deep expertise as a doctor that motivates his hands-on approach, but make no mistake, what happens behind the doors is far more important to him than whatever small amount of credibility he gives to his constituents.

Backing all the way out to the MAHA Civil War, it is apparent to me that the frustration that has been festering within the movement is because those who feel a deep need to get the Pharma industry out of the game are limited in their voice politically. They believed their guy got all the way to the dance, and then decided to roll over to the interests that run Washington. They have been fooled so many times before that they believe that no one is out to protect the people of the nation or listen to their concerns. They see the food stuff as window dressing to cover up the fact that Pharma owns all of the politicians. In the end, they are not wrong about how it has happened so many times in the past. Compromises and concessions are the way the game gets played in Washington, and those who had their lives altered by their power in the last destructive authoritarian moment are not likely to believe that it can be done through the art of politics. In some ways, perhaps the vaccine skeptics are the modern-day Abolitionists who know themselves to be on the right side of history and cannot believe that no one else sees it. Their disillusionment is justified, but their conclusions are premature.

RFK has to build the case, as I have suggested since his appointment, that what the country sees as health is not as it seems. He has to convince a comatose public that what has happened to them around their waists isn’t simply because they had an insatiable craving for the secret spices that the Colonel puts on his chicken. They have to see, time and time again, that they have been lied to, taken advantage of, and been the experimental subjects in a very profit-driven mechanism of the 21st-century American experience. That isn’t going to come without a lot of subversive politics and shrewd undermining of the system that has designed itself to stay permanently in power.

The coming battle that approaches on the horizon is not between government philosophies that are coming to a head. They would like us to think its about liberal and conservative, or Republicans and Democrats or Socialists and Capitalists, but it is not about any of that. This is about the function and value of a government that has been bought and corrupted. The decision we have to make is the same one Jefferson asked our forefathers to assess as British subjects in 1776: Is the government we have securing our liberties, or is it worth dissolving?

I think RFK Jr. is building an un-ignorable batch of evidence to help us decide.

https://jessicareedkraus.substack.com/p/the-brewing-civil-war