When Frogs Jump

We have all heard the metaphor of the frog in the pot of water — heard it to death, in fact. Some scientists disapprove, arguing that this metaphor is “untrue”: at a certain stage in the gradual rise of the water’s temperature, they claim, the frog’s heart rate will speed up, and he will actually try to jump out of the pot. Here, however, in defiance of the scientific literalist, the old metaphor reasserts itself in a striking new form that may reveal the means of breaking today’s growing progressive tyranny before it has completely eviscerated modern civilization.

What happens if the frogs do indeed realize they are being boiled to death, and start to jump? One or two leaping frogs may be ignored, or isolated as cranks and laughed out of consideration. But what if millions of frogs start jumping? What if they don’t stop, even when they realize the walls of the pot are higher than most of them have yet learned how to jump? What if the best-fitting lid is unable to discourage them in their “unrealistic” leaping? What would the cooks of today’s Washington political establishment do under such frustrating conditions? We are finding out.

Progressives expose their true nature when their slowly heated pot is categorically rejected by the frogs. The mirage of “politics as usual,” bipartisanship, and collegiality lasts only as long as men acquiesce in their own enslavement. Of course, a little public disagreement here and there is good for progressive optics, as it perpetuates the comforting illusion of open debate. But what if that little disagreement turns into an all-out refusal to go gently into that good night?

This, as I’ve explained before, is the plausible path to conservative victory before the final collapse. Make no mistake about it: this is not a happy or short road, nor one embarked upon lightly. Dispensing with “politics as usual” means exactly what it says, and more. It means initiating and sustaining a strategy — more than that, a life — of continual resistance and provocation, i.e., of living as free men and women under authoritarian rule. And when progressives are provoked into extreme frustration, their rage knows no bounds. No bounds. For, mainstream mythology aside, we are not talking about a civil political faction here; we are talking about the ancient tyrannical impulse that, in its peculiar modern manifestation, has concealed itself in the garb of “democratic” civility, with horrific success. Strip off that finery and witness the old bloody thuggery of ages past. These people will not stand for serious, sustained opposition. They will crush it, by any means necessary.