Victor Davis Hanson
Does the current United States really allow the voice of the people to be heard in free and fair elections, with information from the government honestly and disinterestedly disseminated?
Increasingly not.
Did the Trump years, or, more specifically, Trump Derangement Syndrome, cause the paranoid Left to destroy democracy purportedly to save it? Or did Trump merely tear away a scab that showed a growing wound beneath?
Consider the following 15 recent signs that democracy as we have known it has all but disappeared. Consider in each instance how the Left has warped a constitutional system or American tradition for the short-term acquisition of power as if the noble ends of ending Trump trumped the dangerous means to achieve them:
- Election Interference. Imagine: During the 2016 presidential campaign, have a presidential nominee, Hillary Clinton, hire a foreign national (and a covert FBI informant/contractor) to invent dirt, including from Russian sources, and then leak the false charges of treasonous conduct of your opponent to the media and government. Hide Clinton’s involvement by channeling her payments to Christopher Steele through the DNC, Perkins Coie law firm, and Fusion GPS. When all that fails, continue the farce with a special counsel investigation designed to consume 22 months of your opponent’s presidency before finding no evidence of Russian/Trump election collusion. Use leftwing government officials in the DOJ, FBI, and CIA to spread the false dossier contents and to further the lie that Trump was a “Russian asset.”
- Warping the administrative state. Have the future Secretary of State and former interim CIA director round up “retired 51 intelligence authorities” to lie in a public letter that the incriminating Hunter Biden’s laptop (authenticated by the FBI as genuine) was likely fake, and instead a product of “Russian information,” or rather “disinformation.” Spring that October Surprise caper right before the final debate to arm the incumbent Joe Biden with supposedly credible denials of the laptop’s embarrassing authenticity. Further, fuse the FBI with social media to squash any honest reporting that the laptop was genuine, all in successful efforts to warp the 2020 election. As a result, an axis of Hillary, the DNC, private contractors like Perkins Coie and Fusion GPS, an interfering foreign ex-spy Christopher Steele, and (the old) Twitter and Facebook were all “colluding” to warp/infect an election—while projecting onto their nemesis Trump of doing what they were doing.
- Record Impeachments. For the first time in U.S. history, impeach a president twice, after he lost his party’s majority in the House. Claim it is an impeachable offense for a president to suspend temporary foreign aid to a corrupt recipient until it can verify that it has not been involved with the Biden family by routing sizable cash to Hunter Biden to obtain favorable U.S. government treatment. Note that no one has claimed Hunter Biden did not receive exorbitant sums from a Ukrainian company for no demonstrable expertise or services or that much of Hunter’s foreign largess was routed to Joe Biden and his siblings, or that Joe Biden bragged publicly that he had threatened to and then did fire a Ukrainian prosecutor (who was looking into his son’s misdeeds) and used threats of withholding congressionally approved foreign aid until the Ukrainian government fired prosecutor Viktor Shokin.
(Note that in 2012 Barack Obama canceled Eastern European missile defense programs in a quid pro quo deal with Vladimir Putin to keep quiet [“give me space”] during the 2012 Obama reelection effort [“my last election”]. And in 2024 Joe Biden, while still a candidate for reelection, suspended congressionally approved military aid (2,000 lb. bombs) to Israel to pressure it to grant a ceasefire with Hamas—in response to Michigan swing-state Arab American and Muslim-American voters who threatened to sit out the 2024 election if Biden continued to support Israel.)
Note additionally that Trump was also the first private citizen and ex-president to be tried (and acquitted) in a Senate impeachment trial. (Compare his admonitions to a crowd of protestors planning a buffoonish one-day protest at the Capitol that turned violent (“I know that everyone here will soon be marching over to the Capitol building to peacefully and patriotically make your voices heard.”) with soon to be Vice Presidential candidate Kamala Harris 2020 in mediis rebus commentary on some 120 days of violent riots that concluded with 35 deaths, 1,500 injured police officers, $2 billion in property damage, and 14,000 arrests:
“But they’re not going to stop. They’re not going to stop. They’re not. This is a movement. I’m telling you. They’re not going to stop, and everyone, beware because they’re not going to stop. They’re not going to stop before election day in November, and they are not going to stop after election day. And everyone should take note of that on both levels: they’re not going to let up. And they should not, and we should not.”
The post <span class="ultra-flag"><i class="fas fa-lock"></i>VDH Ultra</span>Fifteen Ways to Destroy Democracy to “Save It”—Democrat-Style: Part One appeared first on VDH’s Blade of Perseus.