When They Start to Cheat

When do people start to cheat, financially? Typically, not till they are going broke. When do they start cheating politically? When their perfect plan isn't working any more.

So when our Democratic friends spend half a billion dollars getting ballots to the ballot drop-off box, and when Michael Sussmann walks free but Peter Navarro gets put in chains. And when Democratic voters think that the Republican Party is no longer a party but a rebellion. And when the Census Bureau suddenly discovers a big mistake in the 2020 Census that just happens to benefit one party in several states...

Well, it all adds up, and it adds up to Democrats realizing that they are in a heap of trouble, going broke, politically. Of course, we are talking about politics here, and "there is no politics without an enemy." So, the trouble is not that Democrats have gone bat-sh*t crazy on climate and race and crime and spending, and realize: wow, we really screwed up. No, it's the other guys that did it: the climate deniers, the racist-sexist-homophobes, the gun lobby, and billionaires that don't pay taxes.

And it is fascinating for me to read about various Democratic individuals and groups that have literally No Idea how they got into such a mess.

You could say that it just shows the problem with totalitarianism. When you combine religion and politics it means that every political act is sanctioned by God (or your secular equivalent). So of course none of our political actions are wrong or evil or stupid. Because we are talking about God's or History's Truth here.

Anyway, the whole point of the Separation of Powers, and the separation of religion from politics, and the idea of an independent judiciary, and the idea that you really don't want a big government that spends 35 percent of GDP, and all the rest, is that: what if the government, the priesthood, the political judges, the economic czars get it wrong? How do you fix it?

That's the place America is at today. Our ruler are absolutely determined and convinced that the Big Problems are climate change, that requires a complete revolution in energy use, and Systemic Racism, that requires the complete politicizing of education and employment.

But what if they are wrong? What if transforming the energy economy is just as disastrous as Chairman Mao's Great Leap Forward, in which, it is estimated, 30 million Chinese died of starvation? When would we know enough to put a stop to it? How would we stop the political freight train in time?

What if fighting System Racism sets up a race war as the people on the losing end decide they are not going to take it any more?

I just get the feeling that none of the headline people -- or their aides and staffers -- have any idea other than defeating the enemy. That's what people in politics do. That is all they do. That's the only thing they know how to do.

If there's a glorious victory, then history is written by the victors, and it is all about how Washington or Lincoln or FDR or Obama saved the world. If there's a humiliating defeat, then the erstwhile leaders and their lieutenants of the ancien régime are the most evil monsters that ever were. And the history is written, again, by the victors, whoever they are. But whoever they are, they just saved the planet.