It shouldn’t have come as a shock. The surprise would have been if there were drugs strong enough to make Biden’s debate performance even passable. He is not running the government and probably hasn’t been since he took office.
The partisans and anti-Trumpers are still trying to shoehorn their lust for power into the idea that “Trump lied,” even though Biden’s stream of lies was as obvious and brazen as his pretense could articulate them clearly.
My critique of Trump’s performance (at least in the highlights I’ve watched) was that he didn’t sufficiently explain the areas of Democrats’ greatest deceit. He did some of that, to be sure, but the split screen with blank-faced Joe on one side was a tremendous opportunity to go point-by-point with evidence for all those “swing voters” who aren’t really swing voters, but rather simply can’t admit to themselves that they’ve been deeply deceived by Democrats.
Of course, there are multiple audiences, and the campaign may have a better handle on which it must reach. So, I’ll content myself with succinctly laying out my take on the political situation.
In 2020, Democrats leveraged the chaos of the pandemic to cheat a man into office despite his obviously accelerating mental decline because they (1) hated having an anti-establishmentarian in the White House and (2) knew the imminent recovery from pandemic shutdowns would be a huge warm wind in the sales of the party in power.
With Biden in office, they trampled over Americans and our institutions to implement radical policies that would change the culture, ensconce ideological allies, and ensure their continuing power, especially by opening the borders. As Biden’s condition has worsened to the embarrassing point that our world allies’ most-pressing duty is to join in the fraud and babysit him during photo-ops, Democrats have ramped up their gaslighting to surreality and turned our justice system into a political weapon.
The panic we’re seeing now may indicate, for many, that they simply can’t lie to themselves enough to buy the party’s spin any longer, but the dread at the heart of the party is a decision its rein-holders have to make.
If our system of government were operating properly, Joe Biden would (belatedly) resign today, but that would make Kamala Harris the head of the Democrat Party and unshakable as its candidate for President. Her unpopularity and undeniable lack of qualifications mean the party has to force her to exit with Biden, one way or another.
But even the cult-like devotion of Democrats could be torn apart by an attempt to switch out the names (and factions) on the ballot. If this were fiction, it would be amusing to ponder whether a party so invested in identity politics would be better off switching out one woman of color for another (Michelle Obama) or running back to the safe embrace of a photogenetic white man (Gavin Newsom). Alternatively, would Americans buy the come-back of a woman they despised so much that Trump beat her in the first place (Hillary Clinton)?
Meanwhile, none of this works reliably without unity at the highest levels, and the psychopathic Biden family, with all its legal vulnerability, is not likely to exit gracefully, not least because they cannot trust even their own party not to scapegoat them into prison, or at least historical calumny.
Although the Democrats could fraud whomever they wish into office, the scam must have at least a modicum of plausibility, and they can’t risk rifts within the ring of people who can expose the treason. Their every action will be done in the glaring spotlight of Biden’s performance, and the prior propaganda it exposed, and with the knowledge of all that they’ve already done, by which an aggressive member of the opposing party could end them simply by turning on the public lights.
Say what we like about Jon Stewart’s attempt to ham his way past his role in our condition, we shouldn’t (only) mock his cry of despair that “this cannot be real life.” Biden laid bare that we do, indeed, live in a world in which the ruling party, the bureaucracy, the news media, the intelligence agencies, and even the otherwise disputatious leaders of our European allies will conspire to hide the truth from us. This is a world in which systemic election fraud in “the world’s greatest democracy” is not only plausible, but to be expected.
If this read is accurate, the panic and dread are merely the surface manifestations of the deeper emotion of people battling with their consciences, asking themselves just how far they are willing to go.
Featured image from The Road to Serfdom in Cartoons.
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Consider two general principles of political theory while reading this:
1) Government starts by telling the people how much money it needs and then proceeds to collect it, not the other way around.
2) The less competitive political races are, the more incentive those who are predictably elected have to spend money on corruption and return to ask for more for the basic services that affect everyday life.
I’ve been railing for years against the public policy inclination coming down from the state Department of Education to have schools actively lie to parents about their children’s expressed gender identity. Social media can sometimes give the impression that the tide is turning, and it may be, but we should expect progressive strongholds in Rhode Island to be the last to abandon genuflection to radical idols, even when doing so violates parental rights and harms children.
Nicole Solas recently reminded us of this unfortunate reality by reporting that the Barrington School Committee is still marching down this path. Here’s the committee’s relevant language:
Secondary School Students: if school staff believe that a gender identity issue is presenting itself and creating challenges for a student at school, or if the student or parent(s)/guardian(s) of a student indicates an intention, the school should make every effort to work with the student. Generally, notification to a student’s parent(*s)/guardian(s) about their gender identity, expression, or transition is unnecessary, as they are already aware and supportive. However, some transgender students do not want their parents to know about their transgender status. These situations must be addressed on a case-by-case basis and require schools to balance the goal of supporting the student with the desire that parents be informed about their students. In these circumstances, the school administration will ask the superintendent for direction on how to proceed, as soon as the secondary student makes the request for non-disclosure to a parent or guardian. If the administration in collaboration with the superintendent determines that notifying the family carries risks for the student, they should work closely with the student to assess the degree to which, if any, the family will be involved in the process and must consider the age, health, well-being, and safety of the student. The superintendent will receive a copy of any safety plans or gender support plans resulting.
The overall conceit that the school department has this right is bad enough, but two details really drive home the affront.
First, notice that the starting point to initiate this process can come from school staff, as a separate origin than a child’s stated preferences: “if school staff believe that a gender identity issue is presenting itself and creating challenges for a student at school.” So, if a teacher, coach, janitor, or whoever somehow diagnoses a “gender identity issue,” “the school should make every effort to work with the student” to resolve it.
Second, notice the complete lack of due process or experts. The policy requires no psychological evaluation by an outside professional or legal review granting permission to interfere with the parent-child relationship. Basically, the principal and superintendent decide, with no way for parents to find out, seek second opinions (say, from actual doctors), or to seek redress if they discover the imposition and object.
In other words, this is not truly a serious policy to help children while keeping carefully within the bounds of each party’s rights. It’s an ideological subversion, and anybody with children in a school district that sees its authority in this way should remove them as quickly as possible.
Barrington has long been one of two towns to which realtors have steered wealthier out-of-state house seekers, largely because of the school system, but in the past decade or so, it has been taken over by progressives. Residents can be sure that the schools will happily indoctrinate and even medicate their children with or without their knowledge and hire teachers and administrators eager to do the job.
Featured image by Justin Katz using Dall-E 40.
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This ad for Rhode Island’s CollegeBound Saver fund promotion looks like a sleazy investment ad because it is:
Around $22 million in administrative fees from the program go to the private companies that handle the money and the state. This isn’t necessarily corruption, per se, but we can put it in the questionable bucket of non-governmental activities in which our state government engages.
When the government is involved as a player in a market, citizens have reason to question whether its policies across the board are less focused on the general welfare than on the government’s offering or the health of the markets in which it’s dabbling. A healthy democracy requires clarity of roles, and such programs obscure them.
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I’ll stipulate that comedian Sebastian Maniscalco’s story about a kindergartener who identifies as a lion is likely not true, but the exaggeration provides a useful framing, nonetheless:
One of the kill-move cheats of progressives is to pose the question, of these identity politics instances, “How does it affect you?” Appealing to Americans’ live-and-let-live sensibility, that theme arguably won the day for the same-sex marriage movement.
It’s psychological manipulation and a rhetorical trick, though, because it holds things at a superficial and momentary level. If this particular lion is disrupting class, then he simply has to be tamed; it can’t be taken (advocates would say) as a condemnation of all human-lions. If other students are distracted simply by the fact of the presence of a lion-identifier, then they simply have to get over it. If all students begin insisting that they are their favorite animals, then the adults simply should accept that there’s no harm in that.
Even these silly arguments are a distraction, though. If a kindergartener’s classmate can identify as a lion, with everybody required to play along, it becomes impossible to teach unequivocally that lions are dangerous, and there’s sometimes justification for shooting them. To be sure, American kindergarteners are exceedingly unlikely to encounter a real lion that can reach them, but the point is that we make distinctions for important reasons, even if the average person can’t articulate them on the spot.
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A theme one picks up from podcast discussions with cognitive scientists is that much of our perception — what we understand as real — is a matter of our choices about what we don’t pay attention to. A fully capable human has five senses, all of which are constantly sending more data to the nervous system than we can (or want to) consciously consider, so we emphasize different senses, turned in different directions, focused on different aspects of the things we’re observing, and interpreting what we do let through in terms of the stories by which we organize our understanding.
Believing that consciousness is the experience of a relationship with God from moment to moment, I’ve summarized the idea theologically with a few lines of poetry:
Though through sin’s haze we strain to see,
God shows himself as we attend:
by when eyes look, what minds perceive,
where feet do bear, what acts portend.
This fact is starkly observable in the politics of our day, where the difference between Republican and Democrat, conservative and progressive, and engaged and disengaged has become a matter of what facts actually exist. Just this week, for instance, the left-leaning “fact checking” website, Snopes, acknowledged that “No, Trump Did Not Call Neo-Nazis and White Supremacists ‘Very Fine People’.” Anybody who took five minutes to review the claim back in August 2017 — seven years ago! — would have known this to be the case, yet Joe Biden ostensibly ran for president based on the partisan lie.
Many such instances exist, and while most active partisans probably know it’s deception, many Democrat voters do not. Between these two are people who uphold degrees of the principle of “inaccurate, but true.” They rationalize this instance of lying because they believe it crystalizes something more deeply true about Trump, which they hold to be true as a matter of faith, but of which the slippery salesman has managed to avoid concrete evidence.
One consequence of living in different realities — even in the ordinary sense that humanity always does, because each of us attends to Creation from a different perspective — can be seen in game strategy. The winning team, whether in politics, sports, business, or any other arena, often succeeds by acting rigorously to execute a plan that the losing team does not recognize until it’s too late. The losers are reacting to a reality that is not true.
Now look out upon the current political landscape and tell me what you think the acts portend. Stories for each of the following items can easily be found, so I won’t provide links to each; I’m describing a perspective, not martialing evidence:
- Lenient district attorneys and judges let some protesters go (on American campuses and during elite-approved riots) while prosecuting others beyond reason (whether MAGA or pro-life).
- Some politicians get special treatment despite corruption (like all leading Democrats), while others see novel legal theories fired at them like a litigative shotgun blast.
- For favored criminals, parole terms are eased
- Illegal immigration is encouraged
- The attempt to restrict our right to self-defense through all means other than a Constitutional Amendment is relentless.
- The laws of which you’re supposed to be aware multiply beyond the ability of any human being to follow.
- Words can now mean anything at all, and change with the needs of the moment.
- The very same action or opinion by one person is a travesty, while it’s the height of moral rigor from another.
Where do these facts — which I hold them to be — all point? To a system in which the only thing that’s really illegal is being out of favor with the regime. Beyond the gaslighting, “benevolent” nudging, psychological manipulation, deep canvassing, propaganda, and plain ol’ lies, this fundamental goal stands out as the objective.
What this realization means for the team that’s currently on the defensive, I’m not sure, but the first step is acknowledging that we see it, so we at least be responding to the reality that the Machiavellians live by.
Featured image by Justin Katz using Dall-E 40 and Photoshop.
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It still seems like a waste of resources, to me. Here’s his tweet from May, when he announced his continuing fundraising:
There’s no pressure, here. Once people have that initial burst of “right on” feeling, such billboards become part of the background. When I looked into billboards years ago, they were about $10,000 per month. Two months of that would fund a sizable grant for investigative work or other human activity that would genuinely keep the pressure on, whether by unearthing new information or engaging in activism.
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Arthur Brooks offering the graduates of Providence College positive life advice:
You can get rich by telling people that they’ll be happy if they drive a certain car. You can get elected President of the United States by convincing people that their lives will make sense if they just get angry and hateful enough about politics.
And then there’s White House–occupant Joe Biden speaking at Morehouse College:
It’s natural to wonder Democracy you hear about actually works for you. What is democracy if black men are being killed in the street? If the trail of broken promises still leave black communities behind? What is democracy if you have to be ten times better than anyone else to get a fair shot? Most of all, what does it mean, as you’ve heard before, to be a black man who loves this country even if it doesn’t love him back in equal measure?
Brooks’s statement is crafted so both sides of the national divide can blame the other, but from my observations Democrats are more apt to insist Biden is a “good and decent man,” while the average for Republicans is more like “he’s not as bad as he’s made out to be.” Biden is not a good or decent man. He is and has always been a terrible demagog and liar.
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The New York “justice” system may or may not jail Donald Trump, but the impression Democrat partisans are giving is that the entire charade of a trial was meant primarily to produce the label, “convicted felon.” This marketing ploy, as Roger Kimball notes, may not be working: “It’s my sense that the effort to weaponize the word ‘felon’ in the campaign against Donald Trump is failing miserably.”
On the conservative side, we do, I sometimes think, attribute too much conspiratorial competence to people we believe unable to manage even small municipalities or businesses. One should expect error from those who deny reality. Nonetheless, money and power can cover for managerial inability for a time, and civilizational destruction can be the result. The Left has accumulated much of both money and power for itself, and I worry the attacks on Donald Trump represent the last stage before all-out tyranny.
An earlier step was to conquer the nation’s institutions — particularly those in which reality is of minimized immediate relevance — from education to media to legislatures to churches. Thus far, however, the need for people to believe the institutions continue to function as intended has placed a restraint on their activities. The Rhode Island General Assembly still has hearings, although they’ve been performative at least for the two decades I’ve been watching them, and public schools have still claimed (although not proven) that the basics of math, reading, and science are central to their mission. Until recently, the news media still attempted to appear unbiased and willing to give a fair shot to all sides.
As corrupt as they’d become ten or twenty years ago, the need for continued popular faith in America’s institutions provided incentive for their conquerors to stay within bounds, because the power of the institutions derives from people’s willingness to engage with and work through them. That balance is what keeps both tyranny and anarchy at bay.
With respect to lawfare, the boundary had previously been the unjust use of the justice system to force people through a painful process that is, itself, the punishment even when the target “wins.” The institution was still working, ultimately, when the course had been run. Turning Donald Trump’s status (for the time being) as a “convicted felon” into a marketing slogan rubs the public’s face in an abstraction that only exists within the institution; there is no physical status of “felonious” that could be tested outside of a manmade set of laws. Thus, not only the process, but the outcome (the institution) has become “unjust.”
To be sure, the process is not fully complete, and the result for Donald Trump may be reversed on appeal, but the political use of the label, “convicted felon,” has exposed the rot within the institution and reduced trust in fairness. Reversed on appeal, its politicized nature will be undeniable, and half the nation will no longer trust its courts. We see a similar effect as the prescriptions that “health experts” offered during the COVID pandemic turn out to have been overstated, wrong, or even inverted, particularly as the same political party seeks to profit from their ripples, such as the upward swing of the economy from pandemic to just-about-normal.
If the population suspects public health officials are projecting unjustified confidence in society-altering mandates, individuals will heed them less. If people no longer believe elections are legitimate, they’ll seek other means to control their communities. If the justice system no longer gives prosecutions a sense of justice, then tyrants will dispense with the process’s delay and risk and go straight to conviction, while citizens will take matters into their own hands.
As such reactions become more common, our incompetent managers will use their money and power in ever-stronger ways to clamp down, because maintaining control has become an existential imperative for them. Whether the worst of the showdown can be avoided at this late hour, I don’t know, but we can still have hope in Americans’ sense of right and wrong… if we can make clear what is happening.
Featured image by Justin Katz.
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This is a belated acknowledgment that Ben Shapiro is exactly right about the Jerry-Springer-esque catfight in Congress last month:
If we don’t like what we’re seeing in Washington, D.C., the only durable solution is to ensure it isn’t representative. But just like the brawls on that famous gawker show, untangling ourselves from this mess is not as easy as stepping away.
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