Married to the Mob

Life in - and Under - "Our Democracy"

Lately, we have heard much about “democracy,” a term that carries a certain cachet and implies unalloyed good. We are further advised that it is as fragile as it is precious, and thus to be defended from those who would usurp it for their purposes, the Evil Orange Man in particular.

On the other hand, certain great minds of the past regarded democracy as a form of governance to be approached with caution. That group would include a number of figures related to the vaunted democracy of ancient Greece such as Plato and Aristotle, to name just two. Their beef with democracy, in sum, was that rule by the demos, or people, as noble sounding as that might be, could decline into something quite brutish in the form of a tyrannical group holding sway over rival factions. 

Currently, the self-proclaimed champion of democracy in the U.S. is the Democratic party. In trumpeting their status as both exponent and protector, the Democrats are quick to assert ownership, as in “our democracy.” And they are just as eager to seize on the perils, warning darkly of the infidels who would take us down the road to “fascism” - a term which they never make an effort to define. 

What all this breast beating ignores is that to begin with, the United States is not even a democracy. It was crafted as a constitutional republic, a more complex and deliberate form of government designed, among other things, to slow and withstand the impulses of the very mob which the Democrats seem intent on stirring up. 

The Sporting Life

Anyone who has played sports at a serious level understands that the ultimate purpose of competition is not adversarial, but collaborative; for one participant to bring out the best effort of the other, and vice versa. (Spectators would much prefer to witness a close contest rather than a one-sided event.) This is why even after the fiercest of contests the combatants customarily line up to shake hands, each effectively thanking the other for the opportunity to excel. 

To a certain extent, American politics used to follow that model. Politics, once considered the “art of the possible,” could transcend partisanship to produce outcomes both parties could accept. But in the past generation that ethos has all but disappeared, along with any pretense of comity. Now the competition has descended into something more primal, stoking the bloodlust of the arena, with the object being to fell the opponent and grind him into the dust.

In recent years the Democrats have emerged as not just the supra party in power but also, more fundamentally, the patron of the administrative state and ally of the established institutions. It has used these advantages to persistently probe for weaknesses in the governing apparatus in order to further its advantages by dint of sheer majority rule. That majority status - even as thin a margin as it might be - has, nonetheless, been levered to spread money and favors strategically within the state, the private sector, and the non profit sphere, with the increase, consolidation, and extension of power being the return on that investment.

The party has also contemplated similar thrusts which would degrade the constitutional model such as packing the Supreme Court, abolishing the Electoral College, ending the filibuster, and even “reimagining” - one of their favorite and more obtuse terms - the Constitution into a “living” document. It has, meantime, used executive orders as legislative shortcuts, and launched an armada of DEI protocols to re-engineer the institutions and society in its favored mold. In sum, the Democrats have devolved into the demos. They are the proto fascist mob.

Power and Protection

The Democrats’ approach to governance is actually a perfect example of what the Greek elders feared; how those who would be democracy’s guardians are quite willing to take a sledgehammer to it. In addition to the above “inside the beltway” stratagems, the party has been methodically gaming the electoral process for three cycles now in a concerted effort to get their preferred candidates installed over less favored contenders, even inside their own party - while simultaneously going to unprecedented, extra legal, lengths to exclude their most serious external challenger from the competition itself. (They would prefer that the contest be no contest at all.)

In their determined march towards utopia the party and its surrogates have resorted to all manner of underhanded tactics: Co-opting the media as propaganda arm of the government; staging a coup against the party’s democratically chosen candidate; engaging hand-in-glove with large technology companies in a campaign of surveillance, disinformation, and censorship; weaponizing the criminal justice system, and running a scrupulously scripted presidential campaign of a candidate who is unable to even answer a direct question, even though in some cases she has been provided with the queries before they are asked, and even though she has spent the last 20 years in public office, with the last four of those being at the highest level of the central government.

Kamala Harris’ ineptness - to put it kindly - implies that power and privilege in the Democrats' world is rewarded by obedience, not earned by merit. To compensate for this corrupt arrangement and maintain the demos’ slim majority a protection racket must follow. The party is on a persistent prowl for fresh blood as it invents and identifies victim groups, cultivates them as allies, and buys them off in exchange for their loyalty.

But such a scheme comes at a price. Individuals drawn to this cynical project not only sacrifice identity and self respect; they forego personal agency. Like Harris, the longer they stay in the system the more helpless and compromised they become. Under this scheme, talented and ethical people leave to seek opportunity in more challenging and upright realms. The mediocre, meanwhile, remain, and hire their own kind because they fear being upstaged by people with greater skills or higher standards. 

This is the dynamic that results in a world where the president of Harvard University, no less, arrives with a thin resume and is a plagiarist to boot. Nonetheless, her peers, minders, and supplicants spring readily to her defense, not because they’re committed to educational integrity but to their shared ideology. You similarly end up in a world where a cipher like Kamala Harris can run for president after being spat out by an ugly process, and what matters to her supporters is not what policies she might pursue but how dangerous a man her opponent is.

Equity and Incompetence

The competency crisis, personified by Harris, is something we will be hearing more of in the future as the party of “equity” continues its pursuit of power. Standards will keep being reduced in the name of “fairness.” Poorer outcomes will result, to be felt principally in the lives of ordinary people just trying to get by. This will be the legacy of the party that claims to serve the demos but really gratifies the needs and desires of a narrow elite.

In the interim, though, the con must be maintained, the curtain drawn tighter and the sleight of hand enhanced. In this closed environment corruption sets in; the rot spreads. For many mind workers and overproduced elites doing bullsh*t jobs inside this byzantine system it’s a long way down should they opt out. Their minimal or highly specialized skills do not translate well in the real world. And they are employed by the system either courtesy of others’ productivity or largesse, and/or the government’s unique ability to print money. 

Many of these people would be more productive, and of greater use to society, if they were out sweeping streets, planting trees, and otherwise beautifying public spaces. Or they would be more fulfilled actually practicing virtue by helping their fellow man, rather than merely signaling it over his plight. They would be healthier as they would be out in the fresh air and sunshine, using their bodies for a change. They would also be happier, less prone to nervous disorders, as they would be doing something meaningful not only for their fellow citizens, but for themselves.

But they are needed as the party’s shock troops, the minor apparatchiks, who will maintain the mob in its herd state and keep the party’s cumbersome machinery wheezing along. They are also needed, not to organically broaden the big tent, but to synthetically extend the plantation, as the Democrats continue to identify victim groups it can promise protection in exchange for obedience. 

Just listen to Barack Obama a few weeks back scolding - shaming, really - black men in Pittsburgh for perhaps not voting for the candidate who looks more like them, just because she’s a woman. There is a subtext here, and it reads as follows: “You owe us.” And there is a deeper subtext here, too: “We own you.”

Not long after that Obama’s wife, good old frowny face herself, delivered a rage-filled riff to women in Michigan: You ladies better vote for us because your man is so full of “rage.” Only we can protect you.

Obama was attempting to connect with his audience in Pittsburgh as one of the “bros,” but how exactly? What has he done for the South Side of Chicago, the springboard for his meteoric rise and hometown of his wife? This is a part of America which on a typical weekend night is transformed into a virtual killing field, as the bros fight their internecine wars and the young black bodies keep piling up.

As the first black president, Obama could use his moral authority and walk the streets of the South Side and get the bros to chill. But he’s a million miles away - in Washington, on Martha’s Vineyard, and Maui, where collectively he owns some $50 million worth of real estate, fortified at taxpayer expense from the sort of intrusions that the bros back in Chicago must endure on a daily basis. 

Headless Means Heedless

What distinguishes the mob, of course, is that it operates neither from head nor heart. It runs from a lower place, on instinct. With the mob, no individual is responsible for its behavior, and thus it lacks the inhibitions and restraints normally felt by personal conscience, which invites pause and consideration. But when responsibility is shared, like property, no one really owns it, liberating people to suspend accountability and justify their actions via empty rhetoric: They are on the “right side of history,” fighting for the people, e.g. “the collective good.” 

In the mob’s case, where mind and heart do not figure, it does not matter who’s in charge. You could have a senile old man running the government. You could run a witless woman for president. All that matters is that the party remain on top - by any means necessary. And that only really works if the energy remains mindless and heartless. Just stoke the fear about the dangers embodied by the other. That’s easy. You have the likes of James Carville, Hillary Clinton, and Joe Scarborough and his charming wife beating on you about how Donald Trump is none other than Adolf Hitler incarnate. After all, the Nazis had a rally in 1939 at Madison Square Garden. You do see the direct parallel, don't you? 

These are the same people, it is worth remembering, who bang on all day long about other people as conspiracy theorists and fomenters of hate speech.

What our gangsterized government has given us is little more than a headless beast. The mob has effectively decapitated the government, which now simply runs on ideology like a software program. But a headless beast, insensate as it is, inevitably becomes a heedless one, capable of running over and even devouring those who happen to get in the way. That's the story of the Biden regime, the most mindless presidency in American history producing a trail of destruction. 

Which leaves the observer with one fundamental question…

Can the country really endure, let alone survive, four more years of “our democracy”?