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I Am Still Voting Against the One Party State
No, this is not an endorsement of the Libertarian ticket. I am not about to make the stale dorm room argument I’ve been hearing for decades – that our political system is a Republicrat cartel operated by Tweedledee and Tweedledum.
No, what I mean is that America in 2016 is, in every way that matters, indistinguishable from a One Party State.
Of course, I understand that there are still some Republicans in Congress and elsewhere. But I am not talking about narrow political power. I am talking about power in a deep sense, power that permeates through the sinews and tissues of everyday public and private life. Almost all of the institutions of power and influence in this country are dominated 10 to 1 by Democrats. Partisan Democrats are in a position of hegemony over all organs of education and opinion, virtually the entire state and federal government bureaucracy, the economy, the legal profession and all of popular culture.
Elite academia – the gateway to political and economic power – is a Republican-free zone, where loyalty to the Democrats hovers somewhere around 97%. Outside of one or two eccentric econ departments and business schools, our academic intelligentsia displays a range of political opinion that runs the full gamut from far-left to radical-left. Not surprisingly, academia is a fetid cesspool of institutionalized insanity that seeps into the education establishment generally.
Wall Street and Big Business used to be traditional Republican strongholds. No longer. In the Wall Street banks, Democratic dominance is not as overwhelming as in academia – it’s only about 2 to 1. But that’s enough for Goldman Sachs to prohibit its partners from contributing to the Trump campaign (the Clinton campaign is still OK though). In the tech giants that bestride the information economy the situation is much worse. On questions of public and private morality, these companies give the universities a run for their money in the area of bone-crushing conformity. Almost all the big tech CEOs are Democratic party cheerleaders and bundlers. When Facebook or Google deliberately blacklist trending topics favorable to Republicans—Lois Lerner, Chris Kyle, Scott Walker, whatever—it’s standard One Party State operating procedure.
But it’s the traditional old media that is the chief propaganda organ of the One Party State. The media elite and the Democratic Party establishment are fused into one incestuous mass. Turn on the TV any Sunday morning, and you are practically guaranteed to see a former Clinton aide “interview” Joe Biden, and the wife of Al Gore’s ex-chief of staff “interview” Barack Obama. Our elite political journalism possesses all the ideological diversity and investigative courage of the DPRK News Service. Its wholly uncritical, sycophantic embrace of our shallow, cynical, self-obsessed ideologue of a president has brought us a Cult of Personality worthy of Cuba or Venezuela. The newspaper that exposed Watergate today turns a blind eye to one cover-up after another, any one of which makes Richard Nixon look like an amateur. So, Bill Clinton’s wife can destroy reams of federal records to hide how she used her office to shake down foreign governments for cash for her slush fund, and Obama’s IRS can destroy federal records to hide how it targeted conservative groups to swing the 2012 election, all to the yawning indifference of the prestige press.
How do they get away with it? The same way Nicolae Ceaucescu got away with it: it’s a One Party State. They know there are no consequences, as long as the Party controls the State. In a One Party State the newspapers, the TV, the IRS, the DOJ, the FBI and all the rest of the alphabet soup become the private playthings of the Party, or worse—the personal playthings of the crime family in charge. If this does not terrify you, then you are either a Democrat or a member of the New York Times editorial board (but I repeat myself).
The only national institution not dominated by partisan Democrats is the military. But because the American military is steeped in traditions of civilian control and strict non-interference in political questions, it is politically irrelevant, except to the limited extent that it remains the only public institution that enjoys any kind of popular esteem.
In addition, there remain some isolated pockets of Republican political power, such as in some of the state legislatures. But, because Democratic judges and lawyers have abolished federalism, the states don’t matter much when it comes to big national issues—they are shriveled, superfluous pieces of political tissue, completely dependent for their blood supply on federal largesse. If my home state of Virginia wanted to move its capital from Richmond to Farmville, maybe, just maybe, it could do so without having to go groveling to Uncle Sugar for permission. Every other state decision involves the feds, which is to say, the party of Andrew Johnson and Al Sharpton.
This astonishing stranglehold on power must be resisted. Even without knowing anything about the candidates or the Democratic Party’s substantive policy ideas or ideology, I would vote against any presidential candidate dredged up by that party on principle – because such concentration of power is a terminal malignancy on the country.
But as it happens, I do know something about the Democratic Party’s ideology. I know that to vote for Bill Clinton’s wife is to affirmatively choose to live under a regime whose power over me will never be subject to any structural or legal limits. It would be a vote of confidence in the wisdom, impartiality and benevolence of the Democratic ruling class and its permanent one-party administrative dictatorship. To vote for Clinton is to write a blank check to the party whose senate caucus in 2014 voted unanimously to abolish the first amendment. To confirm the Democratic Party in its monopoly on power is to condemn myself, my children and their children to a life of grievance politics, hysterical racism witch hunts, unrestricted warfare against the mainstream, deranged hatred of private enterprise, and the politicization of every zone of public and private life. It would reward and validate a limitless expansion of the administrative state, contempt for the rule of law, undisguised contempt for the values of ordinary Americans, open borders, and a racial spoils system that makes a mockery of civil rights. It would condemn the United States to life under the banner, “All within the state, nothing outside the state, nothing against the state”.
Donald Trump is a constitutional illiterate who can be counted on to trample on every principle conservatives hold dear. Isn’t he every bit the menace to constitutional democracy and limited, law-bound government that Clinton and Obama are? No. If Trump is elected, every Democrat in the country will be transformed instantly into the world’s foremost constitutional expert. All of a sudden, the Constitution will be rediscovered and we will find ourselves lectured ad nauseam about how it limits executive power by legal geniuses like Nancy Pelosi and Sally Kohn. Every Democrat in media and government will suddenly find himself appalled at the slightest hint of executive impropriety. You see, we still have laws and a constitution when a Republican is in the White House.
I detest Donald Trump. I weep for my country when I think of the electoral choice it has presented me and consider what has become of the party of Lincoln and Reagan. I promised myself back in the summer, after the carney freak show of the Republican Convention, that I would stop participating in electoral politics. But I have reconsidered. The monopoly power of the Democrats needs to be broken with whatever imperfect instrument we have available. Without resistance, there will be no going back. The entire country will become like Illinois or Turkmenistan. And probably much worse.
Published in General
Yup. If Republicans took this stuff seriously, and expected to be taken seriously, they would have seriously taken Obama to the woodshed. How’s that LAWSUIT going, Boehner?
We have had no representation appropriate to the crisis for over a decade.
And that’s how we wound up with Trump. He’s the only guy within a thousand miles of politics who had NOTHING TO DO with getting us here. I care not about the content of his skull — only that it is thick enough to break down some doors.
Wonderful post, Oblomov!
This election was SUPPOSED to be a Bush v. Clinton fake wrestling match. It wouldn’t a really mattered who won–Jeb! Is just as pro- open borders as Hilary, for instance. That’s what we’ve become used to in America: just a pageant–it doesn’t really matter which actor plays the dragon and which, St. George.
The elimination of any and all power in the states would continue. LOOKIT: a majority of the states sued to stop forced refugee resettlement, to stop implementation of the WOTUS land grab. People do not want these things! And yet….. we wake up to find they’ve seeped in through some crevice while we defend the walls.
i hope and pray Trump wins. (Unlike you, I like the guy!)
But if he doesn’t, he has still done his country a tremendous service. At the least, it’s gonna be closer than the Monoparty ever dreamed. Trump has got everybody’s attention! That alone is an amazing accomplishment in the United State (singular) of America!
That’s an entirely different scenario. Bush still fell along the left-right continuum. It was still a left vs right choice. He was more right than Gore and the primary field was weak and not very conservative.
Trump is an unsophisticated blunt tool. But sometimes an unsophisticated blunt tool is what you need; such as when you’re lost in the wilderness and swing a tree branch to fend off a pack of hungry wolves for the time being. The branch isn’t going to get you out of the forest, but it may just give you a respite in which you can build a fire or get your bearings or something. That’s about where we are as a republic.
The harm I think he has already done is to the GOP and conservatism in general. The harm he could do from the Oval Office would be a pile I’d prefer not to make.
There’s no getting around the fact that the next president is going to be awful. I understand throwing support one way or another as you judge the potential danger. I just can’t make that calculation myself.
I agree wholeheartedly with @oblomov in the OP. I’ve been thinking about writing up a post specifically dealing with the fact that having Trump in the Oval Office would at least cause some of the press to rediscover that the Constitution includes checks on the executive branch.
Since I find both Trump and Clinton to be personally reprehensible, and don’t expect Trump to govern as any form of conservative, I’d been considering the advantages either would bring, as far as the good of country is concerned.
Clinton’s only advantage is that, if the can-kicking in regards to the economy peters out during the next four years — which I think likely — the know-nothings in the media wouldn’t be able to blame conservatives for the downturn. Not that I could ever vote for her, but that’s the only silver lining I can find around that particular cloud.
Trump’s advantage is that he’d be checked from all sides. Heck, a GOP Congress might even scrounge up a testicle or two between them, since obstructing Trump wouldn’t automatically bring down the wrath of the WaPo and Times editorial pages.
Still don’t know if I can vote for Trump, but I’m at least trying to recall where I stashed the clothespin I use to pinch my nose closed every four years.
Nice use of imagery!
W sold out the Republican Party by not defending himself. He left us holding a bag of $h*t.