Ricochet is the best place on the internet to discuss the issues of the day, either through commenting on posts or writing your own for our active and dynamic community in a fully moderated environment. In addition, the Ricochet Audio Network offers over 50 original podcasts with new episodes released every day.
The Decline and Fall of Tyrannies
While watching Andor and Cars of the People, I have been noodling on how large bureaucratic tyrannies fail. Because fail, they do. The Stasi and KGB and other deeply invasive and evil regimes had countless ways to torture and dominate the populace, but they also eventually fell apart and collapsed. And in the lessons of those failures, I think there are some pointers for how our very own Deep State can be undermined and destroyed.
We find ourselves in a regime that has enough “Gotcha!” laws to ensure that none of us is safe. Others have pointed out that the average American professional commits three felonies a day. Crime Squad!
An IRS audit (latest requirements requiring filings for a mere $600 in “mystery” income, or the “Gotcha” of “Do you own any cryptocurrency”) is enough to strike terror in any civilian heart, whether innocent or guilty. Show the Deep State the man, and the Deep State will tell you the crime. I am reminded of the common entry form to the United States, part of which is shown here:
Notice anything screwy about this? Line 11(a) buries the word “food” in the question, on a form you’ll fill out at the end of a tiring and frustrating journey packed into a commercial airline seat. So if you fly into the US and have a granola bar or snack with you of any kind, you can be nailed for a penalty of up to $10,000. Oh, and if you are Global Entry, you are not even asked the question — but if you do not go out of your way to declare it, then you can be hit with the penalty and lose your status. So there is a “Gotcha!” right there, usable any time by the Deep State, with effortless abandon.
The end result is that we are all criminals. Except that the real bad guys, those helping FTX or Epstein or drug kingpins, or at least those able to regularly pay off the right politicians (and share the Deep State’s goals), are all in the protected class. You and me — we keep our heads down. Practically speaking, the crime is not an error by committing an accidental felony or wrongly filling in a customs form. Committing the offenses is inevitable, merely a question of time. But the crime happens when we get caught. And we avoid getting caught by avoiding attention of any kind as much as possible. Any attention from the Deep State can be ruinous, even if you are squeaky clean. Which none of us, thanks to our ignorance of all the stupid Gotcha Laws, actually can be.
How do we undermine the tyranny? The same way it has been undermined everywhere throughout history. Tyrannies fail when the people can no longer bear them (see Iran today), but they do not fall away gently. It takes a cataclysmic event — a general uprising, or selective rebellions (everyone homeschooling). Which despite my dreams of a truly divided America, does not seem to be on the horizon.
Putting power in the hands of unelected bureaucrats always – always – leads to corruption. The bureaucrats feather their own nests like Russian quartermasters provisioning an invasion of Ukraine. Indeed, at some point, the system comes to rely on that same corruption, without which essentials cannot reach their destinations. People serve their self-interest first, and the farther their self-interest is from a working feedback mechanism (like the market), the more surely and swiftly the bureaucrat becomes insulated from the actual task for which they were hired in the first place. Federal employees who effectively cannot be fired become warlords in their own right, fiercely defensive of their own fiefdoms. Anyone – a Trump or Truss – who threatens those fiefdoms finds the entire bureaucracy turning against them, with devastatingly effective results.
Is it too much to hope that a President DeSantis (in the unlikely event he could win an election against a potted plant with the Deep State in its corner) might succeed where everyone else has failed?
Published in General
Yes.
A thousand times, yes.
And–a truly revolutionary claim that strikes at the heart of the new world order–it’s good when wives become working-at-home mothers and homeschool teachers.
Why, you science denier! How else are we going to bypass the untrustworthy people and fix climate change once and for all?
Good grief! You actually said that!
Not that you can prove.
Remember: they can nail you if someone else says you have crypto, and you cannot prove them wrong to the satisfaction of a judge/jury. You don’t have to lie to the government to end up in jail. The government just has to be convinced that you have done so. Or accept the lies of third parties – see the Steele Dossier.
I don’t know, iWe. How are they going to show your fingerprints on the knife if there’s no knife? If they are determined to convict you of somethng, they probably can, but can you make it more work than it’s worth to them?
No. No president can prevail against unionized bureaucrats. He or she would need first to assemble a crack team of lawyers, and then revoke Kennedy’s executive order allowing government employees to unionize. Once the government unions have been neutralized the president can go after the bureaucracy.
No you can’t, because they get paid no matter what.
We can probably count on John Roberts to decide that de-unionizing the bureaucracy is somehow “unconstitutional.”
Considering who De Santis’ donors are (Blackrock among others) and supporters are (the Bushes and the Bushies), what makes you think De Santis would go after the Deep State? Add to that De Santis’ voting record while in the House, it’s just more evidence. Is it proof positive? No. Is it suggestive. Yes.
When American foreign policy is about regime change as it has been since the end of the Cold War with no pushback from either party, why is it surprising when those running color revolutions abroad wonder why they can’t do the same here? And it is bipartisan.
We had an interesting town meeting discussion one year about the police asking for donations to their charitable foundation. Someone said, “Who in their right mind is going to turn down such a request?” Needless to say, the townspeople voted to not allow the police to solicit donations anymore.
My solution for “Gotcha!” Laws is to pass a law that states that inconsistent enforcement (most offenders are never charged or prosecuted) should be an acceptable defense. If the government does not usually try to enforce the law, then the law should have no teeth.
So, for example, murder remains on the books. But not declaring a granola bar when entering the US? buh-bye.
This would be a nice catch-all to the myriads upon myriads of felony violations every day.
Of course it is.
Trump was an outsider who owed no favors to anyone in either party. And even with his aggressive personality and get-things-done style, he never even threatened the unelected bureaucrats.
Desantis is a life long politician who is part of the Republican machine. He wouldn’t go after the Deep State, even if he could. He’s no fool. They would destroy him, just like they did Trump.
W. understood this. He knew his place.
OTOH, DeSantis cleaned up Florida’s voter rolls and elections.
Control of the Deep State comes through funding. Until you defund them, all of this is a pipe dream.
The way of defunding them is to have a financial/fiscal/monetary crisis that is framed in terms of defunding the bureaucracy vs. defunding Social Security/Medicare. This will give whoever is in power the cover to defund the Deep State.
As for the laws, put committees in the House and Senate to repeal laws with financial incentives benefitting members of Congress personally for repealing laws. Bonus pay.
De Santis isn’t the guy who is going to do this. It has to be an outsider. And getting elected is task one.
I know its the great red flag to being wrong, but this time its different.
We’ve broken from historical norms in an abnormal time. Never before in history has it been impossible to have a private conversation. Everyone has been conditioned to carrying around their own monitoring devices with them – rarely out of arms reach these devices are in the room with us all day, every day.
Listening for their catch phrase for activation.
A person could be under active surveillance and never know it – there is no strange van down the street – no clicks on the phone line when you pick up the receiver. Nobody walking a dog down the block… They can know where you are at any given time – hear and see your ambient environment at any given time…Its the paranoid’s perfect time, the world is listening and watching – and you could never detect it.
The real problem is that the courts have based the right to privacy on expectation. Our expectations have been incrementally subverted. We all know that there are 3rd party records for every phone call we make – yet we expect that’s private? How can we expect privacy when there is a 3rd party record? Same with banking. We expect our credit and debit card purchases are private – but how could they be? There is a 3rd party record of the transaction. And worse that record is at an institution the federal government heavily regulates and controls.
Do you think a single banker asked the RCMP for a court order when they came around to freeze bank accounts of protestors? Not a single court, police officer or cabinet member resigned in protest when tasked to carry out orders they had advised against. The police state arrived in Canada and it was that easy.
I don’t think either Trump or DeSantis will win. If either one wins the nomination, judging from the temperature of the arguments on Ricochet these days, I’m predicting a great many of the other one’s supporters will stay home.
It’s a sad state of affairs. I don’t think the Republican Party can be put back together. It cracked over the Iraq War, the crack widened over immigration, and the battle over Donald Trump has separated the pieces beyond repair.
We’ll become a single-party country. This is exactly what happened in Massachusetts over the last two decades. It’s interesting that Romney has been a dominant player in both places. He split the Republican Party in Massachusetts. He ran against an acting Republican governor (Jane Louise Swift), and that ticked off half of the Massachusetts Republicans.
So, what are the three felonies the average professional commits every day?
As to Trump’s effort to reduce the deep state, IIRC, he had issued an executive order that created a new classification of federal employees in the Executive branch, and tasked each such agency to perform an analysis of its workforce to see what percentage fell into the new classification.
The new classification would have been exempt from certain civil service protections, and as I remember only OMB completed its census, revealing that some 80% of its people fell into the new classification. But the election was lost and the Biden administration rescinded the EO as soon as it took office, so nothing ever came of the effort, clever as it may have been.
Of course, had Trump won re-election and tried to actually can some of these folks, no doubt it would have headed directly to the DC District Court, on its way up to the Supreme Court, and then, to an uncertain outcome. On the one hand, it could be seen as an unconstitutional re-writing of civil service laws by the President because Congress would have had to enact such reform; or it could have been found to have been within the Presidential powers over the Executive branch. Interesting idea, though.
David Henderson reviewed the book and asserts that the title is a gross exaggeration, and that people unwittingly commit only three felonies a month. Henderson didn’t say what the felonies are.
That sounds like it would still require going to court, having a trial… And still, “the process is the punishment.”
Very different story on a state level. Which is one more reason for DeSantis to stay where he is.
You know something I often do, when I go somewhere?
Leave the phone at home!
I will also always have a “land line” and mostly use that.
That President will need a loyal and capable Secret Service.
Never let a crisis go to waste.
I am ready to vote for either Trump or DeSantis in 2024. Not sure if I can stretch far enough to vote for another McCain or Romney.
According to some people, DeSantis might BE the next McCain/Romney. At least on a federal level. Good reason to leave him where he’s doing the most good. Including being an example to other governors.
I don’t know. There is a book on it. And the Reason.com CrimeSquad videos are pretty shocking.
People have been convicted of crimes: leaving their phone at home was considered evidence that they were up to no good.
The first thing I noticed on that form was “close proximity.”