Writer and aspiring politician J. D. Vance recently offered this astute observation: “Barack Obama is articulate but has never made a memorable speech. The reason is that his views are utterly conventional. He’s [incapable] of saying anything outside the elite consensus. He’s a walking, talking Atlantic magazine subscription.”
Which should give us pause. Obama—who divides his time between a mansion in Washington D.C., another in Martha’s Vineyard, and similar enclaves where he lends his manicured hands to whatever elite cause needs them—recently gave a speech at Stanford expressing alarm that people are allowed to read things The Atlantic would never print. What Obama advocated was the suppression of political speech that is unpopular among people who live in places like Martha’s Vineyard and who send their children to schools like Stanford.
Obama remembered just enough from teaching constitutional law to know that he needed some obfuscation. So he burbled about the importance of protecting “democracy.” Most people equate that word with popular sovereignty, which indeed is what democracy has historically meant. But for Obama and his allies, it actually means a system that reliably produces the political outcomes desired by elites. Which is why The Atlantic and similar amplifiers of elite opinion cast nationalists and populists who win free and fair elections as threats to “democracy.” By contrast, globalists, who brazenly undermine governments actually chosen by voters, are portrayed as the true champions of so-called democracy. Hence, the consistent demonization of Donald Trump, Viktor Orbán, and Poland’s Law and Justice Party, a right-wing populist entity that combines staunch social conservatism, economic populism, and a distrust of elites, depriving such retrograde forces of the political power given to them by the voters.
Anyone on Facebook and, until recently, Twitter has a sense of how Obama-style democracy works. The plutocrats who controlled Facebook and Twitter in 2020 and 2021 waged concerted campaigns first to ensure that Donald Trump was not reelected and that no one questioned the legitimacy of Joe Biden’s election, and then to promote whatever action was being urged at the moment by Anthony Fauci and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).
To understand the Great Reset, then, we must recognize that the project represents the completion of a centuries-long and ongoing attempt to destroy classical liberalism (the free market, free speech, and liberal democracy), American constitutionalism, and national sovereignty. The idea of resetting capitalism suggests that capitalism had previously been pure. But the Great Reset is the culmination of a much longer collectivization process and democratic socialist project, with their corresponding growth of the state.
As should be clear by now, Francis Fukuyama’s declaration in The End of History: The Last Man (1992) that we had arrived at “the end of history” did not mean that classical liberalism, or laissez-faire economics, had emerged victorious over communism and fascism, or that the final ideological hegemony signaled the end of socialism. In fact, for Fukuyama, the terminus of history was always democratic socialism or social democracy. As Hans-Hermann Hoppe noted in Democracy: The God That Failed, “the Last Man” standing was not a capitalist homo economicus but rather a “homo socio-democraticus” (222). The end of history, with all its Hegelian pretenses, did not entail the defeat of socialism-communism but rather of classical liberalism. Evidently, the big state and big capital were supposed to have reached an inevitable and final détente. The Great Reset is the consummation of this final détente.
The elite subversion of the free-market system and republican democracy had already been underway for many decades before “the end of history.” According to Cleon W. Skousen in The Naked Capitalist, elites positioned within major banks, large corporations, leading think tanks, influential publishing companies, the media, tax-exempt foundations, the educational system, and the US government sought to remake the US in the image of its (former) collectivist archrival since at least the early 1930s (57-68). As Carrol Quigley noted in Tragedy and Hope: A History of the World in Our Time (1966), elites propagated socialist, communist, and other collectivist ideologies at home, while funding and arming the Bolsheviks in Russia and the communists in Vietnam and promoting international policies that led to the deliberate abandonment of eastern Europe and Southeast Asia to the communist scourge.
For many, the goal of advancing socialism has been most evident in the alacrity with which the institutions of higher education have absorbed and circulated Marxist, neo-Marxist, and post-Marxist collectivist ideologies in their various guises at least since the early 1930s—including Soviet propaganda, critical theory, postmodern theory, and the most recent variants, critical race theory, critical whiteness studies, and LGBTQIA+ ideology. The dreaded “long march through the institutions” was never a bottom-up, grassroots project. Rather, it was an inside job undertaken by elites in positions of power and influence. When the philosophers, sociologists, and psychologists of the Frankfurt school of critical theory emigrated to the US in 1933—armed with the Marxist theory of revolution and Antonio Gramsci’s model for socialist cultural hegemony—they hardly inaugurated this march. Rather, they were welcomed by elites and funded by tax-exempt foundations whose work was already well underway.1 The so-called long march through the institutions was a stampede within them.
To understand the Great Reset, then, we must recognize that the project represents the completion of a centuries-long and ongoing attempt to destroy classical liberalism (the free market, free speech, and liberal democracy), American constitutionalism, and national sovereignty. The idea of resetting capitalism suggests that capitalism had previously been pure. But the Great Reset is the culmination of a much longer collectivization process and democratic socialist project, with their corresponding growth of the state. Despite being pitched as the antidote to the supposed weaknesses of the free market, which World Economic Forum founder and chairman Klaus Schwab and company equate with “neoliberalism,” the Great Reset is meant to intensify and complete an already prevalent economic interventionism, and to use US-led military power to complete this process where economic intervention proves unsuccessful. This explains, in part, the West’s arming and funding of Ukraine against its Russian attacker.
I do not mean to suggest that the Great Reset’s global neo-Marxist economics, and its international rather than national economic fascism, are not new. They are new, as are the means by which they are to be brought about. But we must not be so confused as to think that the Great Reset project was born ab nihilo—it’s the culmination of decades of elite thinking and activism.
1.The Frankfurt school theorist Herbert Marcuse, for example, was funded by the American Council of Learned Societies, the Louis M. Rabinowitz Foundation, the Rockefeller Foundation, and the Social Science Research Council. See Herbert Marcuse, One-Dimensional Man (1964; repr., London: Routledge, 2002), p. iv, where Marcuse acknowledges such funding.
what incentive is there to compromise in order to govern more effectively?
Answer, unless you believe politicians are solely guided by pursuit of the public good, rather than with an eye toward their own chances at reelection, none.
Attempting to understand the political polarization and dysfunction that has increasingly come to define American politics in the twenty-first century requires grappling with a host of interconnected phenomena. The gradual transformations undergone by the Republican and Democratic parties, which saw the steady elimination of liberal Republicans and conservative Democrats, have deep historical roots. For all its apparent complexity, however, our political dysfunction largely stems from a small set of easy-to-understand problems. We must, therefore, resist the popular urge to attribute polarization to specific figures, such as Trump or Obama, and instead look at the structural reasons these figures emerged when they did and into what environment.
History, as Scott Horton says, didn’t start this morning.
Single-Winner, First-Past-the-Post Districts
The problem is, in part, an inherited one. For all their ingenuity and creativity in crafting an experimental new kind of government, the Founders directly adopted the British system of elections at the district level. This was understandable, there being few if any applicable historical or contemporary examples they could look to for guidance, and this feature of the British electoral model apparently worked fine. And in a parliamentary system, where the effective head of government is the de facto leader of a majority coalition in parliament, the model can and does work fine.
In presidential systems not so much.
This has always been a bug more than a feature. And as the American political scientist Lee Drutman has documented, it is telling that while many governments around the world have amended their electoral rules, switching from single-winner, first-past-the-post districts to split-member proportional districts, none have made the switch from the latter to the former.
Uncompetitive Districts
Due to a combination of geographical sorting and gerrymandering, 94 percent of Congressional districts in the United States are now what political scientists designate as uncompetitive. This means one party enjoys so much local popular support it de facto controls that congressional seat. In these districts, the greatest threat therefore comes from a candidate’s own party—typically from farther right or left depending on whether the district is Republican or Democrat controlled. This effectively means the winner of that party’s primary becomes the de facto congressional representative for the district.
As political participation fell across the board from the 1970s through the 2000s, primary voter turnout fell with it. Today, just 28 percent of registered voters nationwide turn out on primary day—up from 14 percent a decade ago. Those who turn up are generally the most ideologically committed partisans of their parties and they effectively choose upwards of 90 percent of Congress’s members.
Unsurprisingly, under these conditions it was increasingly the most partisan of their parties each sent to Congress.
The Nationalization of Elections
This was essentially the ideological purification of brands. As the geographical sorting and ideological party realignments of the 1960s–90s documented by Alan Abramowitz unfolded, party leaders increasingly sought to distinguish their party by emphasizing its ideological commitments. The strategy, pioneered by Newt Gingrich, sought to replace discussions of local issues with the major issues separating the two national parties as the dividing lines in local races.
Because the two parties were increasingly distinct both ideologically and demographically, along urban/rural, college educated / blue collar, secular/Christian, nonwhite/white, political fights at the national level came increasingly to be about the character of the country itself. Under such circumstances, the stakes involved are perceived to dramatically increase. For, unlike distributional questions, questions of national identity cut to who we are and what are values are. Combined with a uniquely competitive electoral environment, politics has increasingly come to resemble warfare rather than reasoned debate.
Insecure Majorities
About that newly competitive electoral environment, as Frances Lee outlined in her important book insecure majorities were a relatively rare occurrence in American politics in the twentieth century. From the Civil War onward Republicans essentially dominated the White House and Congress until FDR’s landslide, which ushered in a period of Democratic dominance. From the end of the Second World War until 1994, Democrats controlled the House for forty-five of forty-nine years—with the Senate much of the time as well.
When one party enjoys such broad support, the dynamics of negotiations between parties are fundamentally different than when either party could find itself in power come next November. Where much of the twentieth century saw minority parties positively collaborating in the legislative process, using what power they had to pragmatically shape legislation more to their liking, American politics in the twenty-first century has been defined by strategic opposition—betting, in effect, that fiercely opposing your opponent’s legislative initiatives will prove more popular with your own voters than will making compromises to govern more effectively.
Yes, democracy is the delusion that everyone can live at the expense of everyone else, but the larger problem for those genuinely supporting democracy is to hold two contradictory principles at once: your own view of what’s good policy and what is the best candidate, and your superseding belief that democratic voting makes for the best governance.
“Most citizens are not doing us any favor by voting. Asking everyone to vote is like asking everyone to litter.” —Jason Brennan, Against Democracy
No, the title is not a typo: I mean the opposite of the quip many people use after elections: “If you don’t vote, you have no right to complain.”
The romantic view of democratic government is the idea that we all come together, display our values and give our say, and through the miracles of aggregation we receive a responsible government that somehow reflects those values. And for the next four years, we can happily spend our time on what really matters in life, while our appointed representatives carefully and competently steward our shared public goods in the best interest of our nation.
If you didn’t sneer while reading the previous paragraph, you have either never participated in a democracy or you are in for a brutal shock once you lift your nose from that fairytale-like view. One most astute critic of democracy, Jason Brennan, opens his book Against Democracy by summarizing how his view differs from most others:
Many of my colleagues entertain a somewhat romantic view of politics: politics brings us together, educates and civilizes us, and makes us civic friends. I see politics as doing the opposite: it pulls us apart, stultifies and corrupts us, and makes us civic enemies.
The big promise of democracy and universal suffrage is that you—yes, you!—can make things better if you just get your buttocks off the couch, inform yourself, and go vote. In every election cycle we are told that it’s sooo important to “get out the vote”—which is weird, because in many states in America’s electoral system it’s completely pointless to vote and because why in the world would a candidate say “Go vote!” unless they meant “Go vote … for me”?
The overlooked flipside of democracy’s promise is that you—yes, you—might make things worse. For what do you know about tax rates or environmental legislation or how to structure healthcare or infrastructure needs or what ought to be taught in public schools? How could you possibly have any reasonable grasp of military procurement or how much the federal government ought to spend on x? (Well, the last one does have a reasonable answer: zero.)
I always find it peculiar that those in love with democracy are always so excited and serious in the months leading up to an important election—and always so disappointed afterward. Their candidate didn’t win, and now they must reconcile that consequence with their own (clearly mistaken) worldview. The people didn’t want what we were selling—how odd.
Three common reactions are
The opposition stole the election (“It was Russia’s fault!”). While the Russia story in America or Britain in 2016 never made much sense, it was a convenient scapegoat for those who couldn’t rectify their devotion for democracy with the terrifying outcomes it had just delivered. For well-educated, coastal elites it was much easier in 2020–21 to ridicule the evil Trumpers for pursuing this avenue in the January 6 attacks, even though the shoe had been on the other foot in 2016 ( … and 2000). Democracy is about hurling crap at your opponent, while conveniently forgetting that you yourself are full of it.
We need more education and to “get the message out.” Clearly, our campaign slogans weren’t good enough or our candidate(s) didn’t resonate with the electorate or there is some ignorance or misunderstanding among the voting public. Because they, like all good and honest people, share our conviction of what’s important. It couldn’t possibly be that many others disagree with our assessment of the world, the values we espouse, or the “obvious” policies we say we wish to pursue?
I hate my fellow countrymen! How could they be so stupid? Don’t they understand that Trump/Hillary/Corbyn/Johnson/Macron/Le Pen is so clearly incompetent and dangerous and dumb and that a Good Society™ requires my candidate to progress?
What’s so interesting about all these reactions is that they betray the foundational premise of democracy—the aggregation of the public’s will into one whole.
A democracy cannot exist as a permanent form of government. It can only exist until the voters discover that they can vote themselves largesse from the public treasury. From that moment on, the majority always votes for the candidates promising the most benefits from the public treasury, with the result that a democracy always collapses over loose fiscal policy, always followed by a dictatorship.
– Alexander Tytler, Decline and Fall of the Athenian Republic
One of the strongest natural proofs of the folly of hereditary right in kings, is, that nature disapproves it, otherwise, she would not so frequently turn it into ridicule by giving mankind an ass for a lion. – Thomas Paine
Monarchy History is replete with critiques of monarchy that could fill a million essays and still leave no room for the kind words, so I will try and focus on the good here. It was consistently proficient in being the dominant form of governance through most of post-antiquity. Despite methods employed, there must be something to be said for that, and perhaps it’s also in the willingness of subjects toward subjugation, something we’ve seen too frequently during the pandemic.
Monarchy gets a bad wrap from historians and democracy sycophants. It wasn’t so bad, so long as you were the monarch or were within the royal court, though you never wanted to be too close to the monarch, nor too distant. Somewhere between dutifully obedient and forgettable was a fine balance to keep your head. Literally.
Hereditary monarchs could be temperamental, cruel, abrasive, impulsive, demanding and indifferent, though many were well educated, thoughtful, wise and measured. The problem with monarchs is you never knew what you would get next. Perhaps with advances in DNA and medical technology we could try this again to make sure syphilitic princes never became kings, who over-taxed overseas colonies into revolt.
The more interesting question we should be compelled to ask given our recent suffered tyrannies is how would a monarch have behaved the past two years aside from complete self isolation and abandonment of his subjects? Would they have done any worse by not doing anything at all? Or worse than five dozen governors, presidents and prime ministers did in locking up healthy people who were never in any harm and forcing them to be injected to enrich corporations that owned them? Would the monarch have told Pfizer and Moderna executives and his health advisors, the minute he knew their products were a travesty and deadly for his subjects, to line up in the town squares across his land to be pelted to death with rocks? Maybe we should be rethinking this one.
Democracy The historical model for this form of government is Athens, Greece, and unlike Monarchy it often gets too much praise. It’s deficiencies are plenty, with the ‘tyranny of the majority’ the most obvious. Look around at public polling data about the pandemic lately and you’ll see this in action first hand. 81 million votes for Brandon Ice Cream Dementia? Even if it was true, which it’s likely not, this is the primo historical example of the tyranny of the majority in action. Elections have consequences and as those entrusted with counting the votes in elections know in Langley, it is only they who really matter.
The word democracy today is nothing more than a rhetorical political weapon to wield in justifying tyrannies whenever rulers need to gaslight their constituents. The assumption always being that whatever is a threat to their tyranny is a threat to democracy itself. It’s a protective shield to hide from the blowback of their own atrocious incompetency. Where the media lies, alternative media that dares tell the truth is “disinformation”. Where the media are stenographers for power, alternative media that exposes their corruption are a “threat to democracy.” This rhetoric can be weaponized for any ends today. Substack is the latest target du jour of the blue check managerial mid wits crying about the unwashed people seeking the truth from alternative sources. These cretins really detest the people, and only love one type of democracy, where the outcome can be arranged through algorithmic manipulation, censorship of the truth and mass coercion between corporate and state powers. This is called Sophisticated Democracy.
Republic The Roman republic was truly a masterful exercise in measured and balanced governance for the time and an example for many in the future to build upon, though like all forms, not without worthy criticisms. Plato’s version would never work today. The most wise among society are ostracized or outright ignored. Even if the most worthy of the role of ‘ruler’ knew it was he who should pursue the challenge, imagine all the compromises of conscience required to fundraise, ass kiss, simplify their thoughts for the commoners and debase their moral principals to participate in such a lowly system. Plato addresses the consequences of refusing this ‘duty’: “The heaviest penalty for declining to rule is to be ruled by someone inferior to yourself.” And so we are constantly ruled by the most corrupt, compromised and least worthy.
The most worthy are always kept so far from power that the idea of a thoughtful and wise ruler would be impossible to realize today. Picture a campaign rally, with thousands on their phones hardly able to focus on anything longer than a goldfish can, and they’re gathered before someone like a modern-day Abraham Lincoln giving his Peoria speech against slavery. Most people would be incapable of comprehending much of it, let alone focusing on content and taking it all in for…three hours.
When Netflix documentaries (grade A propaganda), Young Turks episodes and Joe Rogan podcasts are the “deepest” philosophical engagements of a minority of the people, while the majority dance on TikTok and try to “get in her DMs”, than the majority are ill equipped to identify the wisest and most competent in society, so where democracy fails in tyranny of the majority, Plato’s republic fails in incapacity of the majority. The arrogance of the thesis is only outdone by the ignorance of its antithesis, the wisdom of the ruler collapses at the feet of the ignorant ruled. In short, the people would fail to recognize the most worthy if she destroyed all the others on a debate stage in a white pantsuit while saying “Aloha”, or he dared to say that the invasion of Iraq constituted a war crime in 2008 AND had the title of Doctor.
That leaves the greatest constitutional Republic and the greatest founding governing document ever in limbo for at least a century. One could point to the Federal Reserve Act or Income Tax Act or National Security Act and Patriot Act and two dozen other nails in this republic’s coffin, a futile exercise in historical squabbling. All of it had such tremendous potential, and still carries so much promise for so many, if only it could ever be restored.
Impartiality is now an unknown word to young journalists, who have been brainwashed to see only diversity or lack thereof. Which brings us to the surreal misinformation world that the Zuckerbergs, Dorseys, and Soroses of our society control. This world is the ultimate tyranny, the victory of evil over good, the end of the greatest civilization ever‚ that of Christian Europe and America.
A revisionist-historian-anthropologist-anarchist, whose name is not important because his works are based on personal assumptions and prejudices, insists in a book he co-wrote before his recent death that agriculture was to blame for the sorry state humanity finds itself in at present. According to the departed, hunter-gatherers lived happily in bands, then agriculture was invented, and that led to surpluses, population growth, private property, tribes, cities, chiefs, tyrants, bureaucrats, kings, capitalism, and so on.
I could have told him as much—and I’m no genius, far from it, unlike the departed, who has been called an intellectual superstar by those sandal-wearing (with socks) bearded horrors of the left, otherwise known as professors. The anarchist virtuoso claims that long before the Athenians, in Mesopotamia, councils and citizen assemblies had real power and authority. Another genius, the great classical scholar Taki, disputes that particular theory based on his close friendship with Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle. “These tales originate with con men who spread fake news for profit in the agora and have been and will be around forever,” according to the three wise Greeks. Read The New York Times, The Washington Post, CNN, and the rest of the lefty media for con men.
Any theory, however outlandish and ridiculous, is grist for publicity-hungry wannabes nowadays, so I won’t go on about how magnificently people in Tarzan loin skins democratically managed their affairs. What I will do is praise the Athenian system because it was selective democracy, the purest of the pure of all systems as far as my direct ancestor Taki the elder was concerned.
Not too long after Jimmy Carter had vacated the White House, at a rather rowdy New York party, I posed the question of selective democracy to him. Admittedly I was in my cups, but my question was valid: “Why should a violent drug dealer have the same right to vote as a brilliant doctor or scientist who has benefited society?” “It’s an interesting question,” said Jimmy, before signaling to his Secret Service people to gently remove me. The ancients had no doubts about this, nor did the Brits until recently. One had to show responsibility before earning the right to vote. As I write, in New York, the state assembly has passed a law permitting noncitizens to vote in local elections.
The number of people killed by pro-Trump supporters at the January 6 Capitol riot is equal to the number of pro-Trump supporters who brandished guns or knives inside the Capitol. That is the same number as the total of Americans who — after a full year of a Democrat-led DOJ conducting what is heralded as “the most expansive federal law enforcement investigation in US history” — have been charged with inciting insurrection, sedition, treason or conspiracy to overthrow the government as a result of that riot one year ago. Coincidentally, it is the same number as Americans who ended up being criminally charged by the Mueller probe of conspiring with Russia over the 2016 election, and the number of wounds — grave or light — which AOC, who finally emerged at night to assure an on-edge nation that she was “okay” while waiting in an office building away from the riot at the rotunda, sustained on that solemn day.
That number is zero. But just as these rather crucial facts do not prevent the dominant wing of the U.S. corporate media and Democratic Party leaders from continuing to insist that Donald Trump’s 2016 election victory was illegitimate due to his collusion with the Kremlin, it also does not prevent January 6 from being widely described in those same circles as an Insurrection, an attempted coup, an event as traumatizing as Pearl Harbor (2,403 dead) or the 9/11 attack (2,977 dead), and as the gravest attack on American democracy since the mid-19th Century Civil War (750,000 dead). The Huffington Post’s White House reporter S.V. Date said that it was wrong to compare 1/6 to 9/11, because the former — the three-hour riot at the Capitol — was “1,000 percent worse.”
Indeed, when it comes to melodrama, histrionics, and exploitation of fear levels from the 1/6 riot, there has never been any apparent limit. And today — the one-year anniversary of that three-hour riot — there is no apparent end in sight. Too many political and media elites are far too vested in this maximalist narrative for them to relinquish it voluntarily.
The orgy of psychodrama today was so much worse and more pathetic than I expected — and I expected it to be extremely bad and pathetic. “House Democrats [waited] their turn on the House floor to talk to Dick Cheney as a beacon for American democracy,” reported CNN’s Edward-Isaac Dovere; “One by one, Democrats are coming over to introduce themselves to former VP Dick Cheney and shake his hand,” added ABC News’ Ben Siegel. Nancy Pelosi gravely introduced Lin-Manuel Miranda and the cast of Hamilton to sermonize and sing about the importance of American democracy. The Huffington Post‘s senior politics reporter Igor Bobic unironically expressed gratitude for “the four legged emotional support professionals roaming the Capitol this week, helping officers, staffers, and reporters alike” — meaning therapy dogs. Yesterday, CNN’s Kaise Hunt announced: “Tomorrow is going to be a tough one for those of us who were there or had loved ones in the building. Thinking of all of you and finding strength knowing I’m not alone in this.” Unsurprisingly but still repellently: Kamala Harris today compared 1/6 to 9/11.
In fairness, Republicans have engaged in many of the tactics ascribed to them. But their historic embrace of limited governmental power has usually restrained their impulse to direct people’s lives.
They have tended to demonize small groups (e.g. left-wing communists) rather than entire populations. The argument that Republicans hate African Americans is simply a Democrat falsehood belied by the GOP’s long support for racial justice and the fact that America is by every measure less racist than it has ever been.
Democrats have challenged the legitimacy of every presidential election they’ve lost this millennium: They blamed a corrupt Supreme Court for their defeat in 2000, crooked voting machines in 2004 and Russian interference in 2016 – sparking a years-long collusion hoax to knee-cap Trump’s presidency.
But now, as President Biden’s poll numbers tank, his legislative agenda falters and his party’s 2022 prospects look increasingly grim, they and their media allies are adding a new twist to the tactic: They’re challenging elections before they happen.Prestigious news outlets including the New York Times, Washington Post, the Atlantic, NPR and the New York Review of Books warn that American democracy is under siege. With headlines ripped straight from Democratic Party talking points they argue that Republicans are planning a two-pronged coup to seize power in 2022 and beyond.Step one, they say, is a series of election laws being passed by GOP state legislatures designed to thwart the will of the people.Anyone who has bothered to read these pieces of legislation – which modify but still maintain early voting, mail-in voting, and other open-ballot measures – knows that their impact will be negligible. That hasn’t stopped Biden and others from describing them as “Jim Crow in the 21st Century.” Note this is the same argument they made for years about voter ID laws, which, studies show, do not suppress minority turnout. Further claims that the laws will allow state legislatures to pick the winners despite the tallies is also a fabrication.The intent of this argument is clear – to cast doubt on the legitimacy on all Republican victories. That it is being made by the same people who relentlessly (and correctly) assail Trump’s false claims that he won the 2020 election demonstrates their bad faith.The second prong of their coup narrative is even more invidious. In their telling, the Jan. 6 assault on the Capitol was just a test run for Republicans to violently seize power if their plans to rig the elections fail. Jan. 6 was, indeed, a dark day in American history; it was a criminal riot stoked by a troubled president. Its perpetrators, at every level, deserve the full measure of fair justice.But it was not insurrection. The perpetrators were unarmed, for one thing. Reuters reports that the FBI found scant evidence that the riot was an organized plot to topple the government. And we can trust the authority of our own eyes to see the absurdity of claims that Jan. 6 was worse than 9/11.I am tempted to say that no reasonable person could embrace the coup fantasies advanced by the left. And while there is almost certainly a cynical, partisan aspect to these arguments – proponents believe they will help their cause – the truly frightening thing is that many are sincere.Many honestly believe that the American right is a hotbed of violent hatred bent on gaining control of the nation as the brownshirts did in Germany during the early 1930s. To their mind, Trump is only the outward symbol of a cultural cancer (although NPR compared him to Hitler in a recent report).Rep. Jamie Raskin of Maryland recently summarized this view in the New Yorker.
“January 6th was not the final act, but perhaps the prologue to a titanic struggle between democracy and violent authoritarianism in America. Long after Donald Trump is gone, we’ll be dealing with a movement of violent, neo-Fascist elements who came very close to knocking over the U.S. government.”
Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter Barton Gellman tried to define the threat more precisely in his long Atlantic article, “Trump’s Next Coup Has Already Begun,” citing a June poll which reported that just over 8% of Americans agreed that Biden’s election “was illegitimate and that violence is justified to restore Trump to the White House.” Never mind that poll results are notoriously unreliable, especially when trying to reduce complex questions to yes, no and maybe answers; this was enough for Gellman and his sources to declare that at least 21 million Americans are “committed insurrections.”This squishy finding – supported by no evidence of armed groups planning political mayhem – then becomes fact, as Gellman quotes an “expert” who states, “‘The last time America saw middle-class whites involved in violence was the expansion of the KKK in the 1920s.’”Commentator John Heilemann echoed and expanded this “fact” without challenge on NBC’s “Meet the Press,” telling viewers, “We’ve had political violence before, lynching, many things over the course of time that African Americans have suffered, but this is 30 million people right now who are ready to take up arms.”Probably because we have never seen signs of such violent intent – even the Jan. 6 assault was arms-free – journalist Ron Brownstein assured CNN voters that the “Let’s Go, Brandon” chant widely adopted by conservatives as code for “F— Joe Biden proves their thirst for “insurrection.”How can Democrats and their allies embrace such a dark view of the American people? History provides part of the answer.From their 19th century roots as the party run by Southern planters and Northern political machines, to their embrace of technocratic progressivism during the 20th century, to their current status as the party of global elites, the Democratic Party has long been a hierarchical outfit where those at the top promised to act in the best interests of those below them. Especially in the South, this paternalism was fused with demagoguery, as leaders kept voters in line by playing on fears of the “Negro menace.”In the years following World War II, Democrats gradually changed the groups they pretended to speak for – working-class whites were out, once marginalized groups were in – but their DNA remained the same. They continued their uneasy relationship with the give-and-take of American democracy; convinced that their policies were unassailable, they argued that moral failings – stupidity, racism and greed – explained why we have two parties (see Thomas Frank’s much-discussed but superficially reasoned 2004 book, “What’s the Matter with Kansas?”). And they began using the exact same language that had once been deployed against blacks to demonize Republicans – today’s warnings of rampant white supremacy and conservative insurrection are updated versions of their ugly rhetoric regarding slave revolts.In fairness, Republicans have engaged in many of the tactics ascribed to them. But their historic embrace of limited governmental power has usually restrained their impulse to direct people’s lives. They have tended to demonize small groups (e.g. left-wing communists) rather than entire populations. The argument that Republicans hate African Americans is simply a Democrat falsehood belied by the GOP’s long support for racial justice and the fact that America is by every measure less racist than it has ever been.America is a fractured nation and we must be clear-eyed about the sources of this division. But instead of providing insight, the ugly smears passing as wisdom among Democrats are only adding fuel to the fire. In their quest for power, they seem willing to burn down the entire house.
Milbank isn’t exactly an ace dot connector – even when the dots are of his own making. Seven years ago he gave us A true Obama scandal sounding like an apoplectic schoolmarm over the scoop of CIA double dealing. He wanted to rap the man on the street’s knuckles with a ruler for yawning at a “scandal” that had been getting moldy for ten years.
“Democracy” may not be the unruly, confusing, rough and tumble thing to grade that some people think it is. The Center for Systematic Peace is sitting back judging the institution for us all on a 10 point scale. It turns out to be more like competitive diving, gymnastics and ice-skating than your average Joe realized.
Dana Milbank sees his country slipping into the clutches of Tonya Harding democracy. He’ll take nothing less than Thornton Melon democracy. The Washington Post scribe demands the perfect 10’s Rodney Dangerfield got using three diving boards performing a Triple Lindy in the film Back to School. It’d be nice if WP editors were just as demanding in their copy. The WP creates a new glade every day pulping Canadian conifers. And after putting print on them they’re still pulp.
This connoisseur, of rule by the people his column is constantly sneering at, picks an odd source to launch his tirade: “We are closer to civil war than any of us would like to believe.” The title is a quote from Barabara F. Walter, a political science professor at UC San Diego, whose real clout comes out of serving on the CIA’s Political Instability Task Force. An organization notorious for being mobbed up, abetting coup d’états, facilitating assassinations, faking news, using torture, destroying historical documents, arranging kidnappings and encyclopedia length ventures in skullduggery is what he relies on to warn us of the perils to democracy. I can hardly wait for his column citing Elizabeth Bathory as the authority on prevention of child abuse.
Other than events at the Capitol January 6 nothing specific is described in the article. One rowdy day is a kind of weak omen to use scaring people on the streets of America out of their wits. It gets tiresome reminding the holy media-academic synod how the crime rate has soared in the last 18 months. Pain inside the beltway is all they find genuine – geographically distant wounds are lame excuses for whining.
“By law, the task force can’t assess what’s happening within the United States,” we hear after he quotes a member of it doing just that. It gets richer though – if this guy does any digging he doesn’t share results with readers. Later he says:
“Citing the Center for Systemic Peace’s “Polity” data set — the one the CIA task force has found to be most helpful in predicting instability and violence — Walter writes that the United States is now an “anocracy,” somewhere between a democracy and an autocratic state.”
Dr. Monty Marshall, who is the director of the CSP, informed me in a phone conversation that his organization was originated and is funded by the CIA. Milbank’s idea of living up to the Post motto – “democracy dies in darkness” – is telling the public who the CIA finds “helpful” without telling them who the informers are. Does he even know? One call worked for me. The CSP turns out to be a spigot at the end of an agitprop pipe running from Langley. They get their dope from the finest experts money can make into Charley McCarthys.
Jeff Bezos landed a $600 million contract with the Central Intelligence Agency himself in 2014. That’s chicken feed to him but – as many a career criminal knows – greenbacks are not the only valuable things The Company pays off with. Milbank isn’t exactly an ace dot connector – even when the dots are of his own making. Seven years ago he gave us A true Obama scandalsounding like an apoplectic schoolmarm over the scoop of CIA double dealing. He wanted to rap the man on the street’s knuckles with a ruler for yawning at a “scandal” that had been getting moldy for ten years.
Meanwhile, the bottom line in every shrill screed over democracy’s impending doom is the need for a media instability task force – mass access to both the mics and speakers of mass communication being the number 1 threat they find to “democracy.” Civil war looms on the horizon if people who don’t realize the CIA is talking to itself out loud don’t get to preach to us – with “Amen” the mandatory response.
The CSP’s home page begins its rhetorical trek to the democratic promised land with the slogan: “Democracy cannot be defended by force; it is enforced through accountability.” How do you go about getting accountability without any ultimate resort to instruments of force? Once you solve that one the need for government is eliminated altogether. That government’s themselves are the hardest things on Earth to hold accountable may have something to do with the amounts of forceful capability they tend to amass. Being nothing less than a tentacle of government themselves explains the CSP’s strange construction of the word “enforced.”
This, from the CSP’s mission statement, makes it sound like a comprehensive large scale operation:
“The Center continually monitors political behavior in each of the world’s major states, that is, all those with current populations greater than 500,000 (167 countries in 2014) and reports on emerging issues and persisting conditions related to the problems of political violence and “state failure.””
They are based in Vienna, Va., but provide a contact number starting with a 202 (DC) area code. My first call got a recorded message. Later the director got back to me. When I tried again several times for follow up the call cut off after one ring. Dr. Marshall’s office obviously has no receptionist. It operates off his cell phone…hitting the red button when an unwelcome number is on the screen. Their headquarters, at 426 Center St. N. in Vienna, doesn’t sound like it houses much. Is it even manned?
Both Marshall and Milbank direct us to the “Polity data set” that’s supposed to elaborate how the US got knocked down 5 pegs on the ten point scale in five years. The link is above; try making sense of it. If there is any straightforward description of criteria I couldn’t find it. The closest we get to anything coherent comes from the so-called “Regime Narratives.” Like the rest of the site “RN” contains tables and graphs. If you have the idle time to try and take on the fool’s errand of decoding one, go ahead. The actual “narratives” are selective news summaries from recent events. If you were in a coma for the last half decade they might be slightly informative.
The problem, we learn from this highly regarded non-profit, turns out to be the same one we’ve been hearing about from Silicon Valley, Academia, major media and other shrill voices for years. Opinions, and especially facts, that circulate on laptops and cell phones without the benefit of editing from the high-priesthood. The possibility that anyone sermonizing from a conventional pulpit – ranging from national media, a political stump or to a college classroom – bears any responsibility for violent unrest gets no consideration.
American democracy may be tottering on some kind of brink. Plenty of developments on our streets make the case. All the screeching about violent upheaval isn’t entirely unfounded. But how can people who find events on Capital grounds January 6 to be the only ones that count expect to be counted on as reliable sources? Establishment voices are muttering to themselves like guys in rags who have been carrying incomprehensible signs in Lafayette Park for 20 years. DC old-timers might wonder: are our informing classes coming to resemble hosed down, suited up versions of Sky King?
MCViewPoint 