You should be of high spirits. Donald J. Trump, who is the only major American political figure alive interested in conserving anything, won the election. Donald J. Trump, the one figure we knew might be able to spark counter-revolutionary awareness, has sparked that change. Trump won in procedural terms—but don’t spend your time obsessing with these formalities, let the lawyers deal with that. The election crisis we face now is not the “chad counting” we witnessed in the 2000 race; it is not mere legalism. Trump won on a deeper level, one from which the springs of counter-revolution can flow. That win is in the general will of the people.

Anyone who is discouraged by the current state of lawsuits, propaganda and the rest clearly didn’t have his head together on November third. This was always going to happen. There was always going to be fraud, there was always going to be gaslighting, there was always going to be the treason of wimp conservatives. But it wasn’t clear until Trump’s huge numbers came in that the fraud would have to be so blatant, that the gaslighting would be so cartoonish, that the cucks would be such a pathetic minority. Given the situation faced on November third, things are going as well as anyone could have realistically hoped for. Since January 20, 2017 this has been inevitable.

What was not inevitable is the enthusiasm Trump has inspired. Trump factually won the election. But his victory is deeper than that. Because his victory, and his support, go to the deepest root of what we can recognize in secular politics. He is supported by something deeper than the popular vote, and that is the general will of the people, of the very popular sovereignty that inspired our independence. There was no question that Biden’s tremendous fraud would spur a Constitutional crisis. But the particular reaction we see is not merely procedural, but has in it the signs of a reawakening, of turning back to our roots and cutting away the gnarled and dead branches that have sprung from them. Those roots are popular sovereignty, and they provide the soundest basis for counterrevolution.

The people are the sovereigns of America. This was stated by the Founding Fathers as a universal principle. Whether or not we want to accept it as everywhere and everyplace applicable, the notion of America and popular sovereignty are inextricably tied. Popular sovereignty is the guiding star of our political existence. It provided the intellectual justification for our independence. The principle was applied by the Southern states for secession, and the very same principle was invoked by Lincoln in order to crush it.

Popular sovereignty has no necessary relationship to democracy. Rousseau himself, the greatest popularizer of the idea, was also the greatest disparager of democracy. “Were there a thing as a nation of Gods, it would be a democracy. So perfect a form of government is not suited to mere men.” And of course, if popular vote had determined the course of American affairs, we would still be colonies. It was not until the Progressive Era when popular sovereignty was conflated with democratic representation and voting rights—that “most precious” of all our rights, we are told. We are told this was progress. In truth, it came about because the human materiel of faceless women and minorities was necessary to effect the contemporary revolution in government. The general will of our nation is not captured in the formality of “fifty-plus-epsilon,” or the combined mass of DMV ladies and bugmen, and it is ludicrous on its face to suggest otherwise.

Part of the incredulity Trump supporters feel at the election results is in comparing turnout at Trump rallies with the number of ballots cast for Biden. They should not be. Ballots, even when they are not fraudulent, are mere formalities, meant as a proxy for political enthusiasm. The popular vote is most manifestly not expressive of the general will of the people. Biden is a walking corpse animated by the gnostic demon of neoliberalism. The only will these SSRI-addled zombies evinced was that their deathwish be universal.

Anyone with any sense knows that the modern fetish of democracy must be destroyed before we can make any progress. We are already seeing such a counterrevolution play out. The goal now is to not base this in terms of might-making-right, or that Trump deserves to win because he has the better lawyers or judicial appointments. He is winning, and has won, because he has the will of the people behind him. The people of America are becoming radical in the sense that they are returning to their roots. This principle, which was once used for the purpose of revolution, should now be the heart of counter-revolutionary movement.

This may rub some on the right the wrong way. Sovereignty is that power to which beyond there is no further recourse. An orthodox Christian must be skeptical of popular sovereignty, at least in the universal sense, because no solid Christian can deny the absolute kingship of Christ. The Social Kingship of Christ arises from the fact that Christ made the universe. Insofar that anything exists, it exists because of Christ. And insofar that anything is true or just, it derives its truth and justice because of and through Christ; this is why Christ is the Logos and the Truth itself. To deny the ultimate sovereignty of Christ is to deny the primacy of Truth and Order, which by the Law of Nature must lead to a fall. “Sooner or later it all gets real,” and even the most absurd tyranny must someday crumble.

But the particular sovereignty of Christ, that is sovereignty within one nation, poses different difficulties. This has never been so much a problem in America as modern reactionary poseurs like to think it is. John Ashcroft, late as the 2000s, could unabashedly state that America had no king but Christ. But for Christ to be an immediate sovereign in temporal matters, there must be an authority higher than the state against which the laws of the state can be weighed. In the Catholic Church, this higher authority is called the Magisterium. Before the 20^th Century, there were no real divides between major Christian sects regarding moral law. Now, of course, things are much different. Christian sects in America have collapsed. The institutional Catholic Church has no interest in enforcing the Magisterium in either church or state. The choice now is between popular sovereignty and rule by the Antichrist. And neoliberalism, whether it resides in the halls of church or state, is an antichrist.

No, in the present day the people are still the most desirable sovereign. Reactionary poseurs try to stake a phony neutrality in American political affairs, but this is out of cowardice and not sound principle. The political ideal popular sovereignty speaks to the Materialism of the 18^th Century, but it still enunciates the fact that a just ruler owes inalienable duties to the people. If Popular Sovereignty only gets one half of the equation—if it speaks only to rights and not to the duties of the people and their governors—then it at least places the people as a whole in a position not to be trampled upon. There is no need to apotheosize the People, as Rousseau did; in this apotheosis is the seed of every show trial and tribunal of the 20^th Century. But in a world where the highest authority, the Church, provides no countervailing power, the People are better than the antichrist.

And the American people are still better than the American oligarchs. The “American people” are still a decent thing. They are often obese, but when you talk to them they’ll talk about losing a few pounds. They succumb to many modern perversions, but they are also likely the children or siblings of divorce. They are prone to the greatest evils of the present day, but they are also the victims of them. For a patriot, one who loves his country, this is who the American People are. These people, the American people, may be a minority. But the supermajority of faceless nothings simply does not matter. That minority is what you know in your heart is the “American people.” They are the people our enemies, those wielders of the popular vote, despise. They are the real American nation.

The American people are rediscovering themselves, not as a homogenous bloc of voters nor as IRS taxpayer ID numbers, but as the real rulers of this country. They are finding sparks of courage in the Constitution, not the Constitution as was created by the Court over the past hundred years, but one in which the sovereign people have their will effected through the states. Your state legislators, those men you saw grilling the park last Fourth of July, now have an efficacious role to play in governing our country. Local officials are finding their titles give them real limited authority, that they are not mere peons in the Leviathan of imperial democracy. The trumpet blare has sounded across the land that vote counts are not dispositive and from now on are almost certainly illegitimate. A century of lies and unwisdom are being unlearned in weeks’ time.

There are no guarantees about any of this. We are on a dark path, and only a sharp right turn can take us off of it. But knowing this, there is no reason to be particularly pessimistic at this moment. We are where we must be, but we are better off than we could be. The American People are rediscovering themselves, and in whatever form this may take, there is still hope that that People and the nation they form may not perish from the earth.