Prominent Democrat politicians and their many lapdogs in the media have taken to calling their political opponents (and particularly Donald Trump) a “threat to democracy”. This is when they aren’t calling him a Nazi or a puppet of Vladimir Putin.
The accusation strikes me as false. Worse, it seems like an example of “projection”, a trait common in narcissists and people with “dark triad” personality traits in which they accuse people of their own faults and negative behaviors.
For example, Democrats have been using blatant “lawfare” to threaten and harass Trump with bizarre and ridiculous (and expensive!) lawsuits involving “novel” legal theories that transmogrify misdemeanors (at worst) into felonies.
Even worse, while in office they marshalled the power of the FBI and other elements of the Deep State to hem Trump in, undermine his anti-war efforts, and attempt to frame him for conspiring with Putin to rig the 2016 presidential election.
It’s the most bizarre and high-profile string of anti-democratic behaviors I’ve ever personally witnessed from one political party. And all this while they insist that if they lose the next election, it’s “the end of democracy”.
And their anti-democratic behavior doesn’t stop there. When Robert F. Kennedy Jr. decided to run for president this year, it was as what he is, a Democrat. But the Democratic National Committee quickly made it clear that he wasn’t going to be allowed an honest shot in a primary against the incumbent Joe Biden.
So, since he is a serious man, he decided to go ahead and run as an Independent. Then, the “pro-democracy” Democrat Party engaged in a multi-state campaign of lawfare to sue RFK Jr off the ballots of as many states as they possibly could.
They are even using the law to keep the Green Party’s Jill Stein and Independent Cornell West off the ballot in some states. And why? Because they feel that these candidates might “steal votes” from their preferred candidate(s).
So, who, exactly, is the “threat to democracy” here?
As I write this, the lawfare chicanery is ongoing. I have no idea how many state ballots RFK Jr. will successfully get on, but I hope it’s all of them. Not because he’s my preferred candidate, necessarily, but because the dominant party shouldn’t be able to use the law to prevent the citizenry from voting for challengers.
And I should point out that the Republican Party is no better in this regard, they just aren’t the dominant party, so they aren’t as successful in their own anti-democratic efforts.
The Republican Party frequently sues the Libertarian Party to keep them off the ballots in various states. Why? Well, to keep the LP from “stealing” their votes, of course! If they had control of more state legislatures and secretaries of state, I’m quite sure the Republicans would be just as unprincipled as the Democrats are currently.
Both parties are rotten.
Politics is dirty and very few politicians are principled and honest. And it’s no wonder, really. Power corrupts, as the adage says. And the US government is the most powerful one ever known to man. Of course it’s corrupt.
Your local health department wields enough monopoly power to generate bribery and corruption. The US federal government spends over $6 trillion a year and has bribable regulatory departments on a scale that dwarfs a local health department.
So, is our government corrupt? No. It’s rotten to the core.
Which means that our democracy isn’t “under threat”. It’s lost. And I honestly can’t see how we are going to “vote our way out of it”.
Sorry I woke up in such a negative mood this morning, folks. I’ll be more cheerful tomorrow, I promise! And you know what isn’t corrupt? The game of poker. Want me to teach you how to play it really well? Here’s how.
Naturally,
Adam
Follow me on Twitter(X)! “@rerazer”
It is what it is—enough to make us very grumpy. Happily there’s enough of us to help recover from this death spiral… nice use of “transmogrify”