Despite the particular lack of respect granted the 9th and 10th Amendments, as the center dissolves and weakens, those two are our walkaway cards, served by the First and Second Amendments, but not subservient to them.  Walk we will, joining other Americans in a massive ongoing movement of decentralization of place, economy, and thinking that echoes earlier migrations from Europe to North America.  Now we travel away from urban and Washingtonian command and control towards a million Walden Ponds.

The impoverished, the risk takers, the independent thinkers, the entrepreneurs and the sincerely religious packed up from the Old World and set sail for a new one they hoped would be more to their liking –  including a Republic that from its very gestation was uncertain about its fundamental and limited role in American society.  In 1830, John Adams wondered if the unusual vagueness of the so-called "common defense and general welfare" clause in the Constitution was undefined because of an innocent "inattention to the phraseology" or something far more sinister.  He goes on to write, defining the fundamental cause and effect of the war between the states yet to come:

…without an equal watchfulness over the great landmarks between the General Government and the particular Governments, the danger is certainly not less, of either a gradual relaxation of the band which holds the latter together, leading to an entire separation, or of a gradual assumption of their powers by the former, leading to a consolidation of all the Governments into a single one [italics added].

Decentralizing forces opposing the totalitarian might be only philosophical, or somewhat political, or simply the second law of thermodynamics as applied to human energy.  In fact, they are all three.

Persistent totalitarian tendencies, and an irrational and immoral lack of give and take in state relations, tends to collapse empires – philosophically, politically, and physically.  The question is, does NEWTRUMP acknowledge this reality, or does it embrace anti-reality?  Does NEWTRUMP understand "how stuff works" or does it seek creative ahistoricism towards some as yet mysterious new state of affairs?

Five months in, NEWTRUMP sits astride a deep state that remains viciously predictable, solely survival-oriented, and closer than ever to its natural and probably violent end. Trump inherited the deep state's war against Russia, and those conducted for the Israeli state, and so far NEWTRUMP has delivered none of the promised peace.  Henry Kissinger, bless his heart, published his last book entitled "Leadership" and he bemoaned two things – first, the ability of people outside of the state to access information formerly controlled by the state, and secondly, that "Forgetfulness is sometimes the glue for societies that would not otherwise adhere."  We the people, and our trite, banal governments are no longer allowed the luxury of forgetfulness.