America’s Authoritarian Regime

by

Gadfly

           Today, House Managers conduct their closing arguments to convince the U.S. Senate to convict President Trump based on two Articles of Impeachment passed in the U.S. House of Representatives without a single Republican vote.  In a calculated strategy by Speaker Pelosi to wait a month to send the “urgent” Articles to the Senate, Managers cry foul because the Senate will not allow additional witnesses, even though they chose not to pursue them during the House’s proceedings.  Following a consistent pattern, Managers cite a New York Times article that says a leaked manuscript by former National Security Advisor John Bolton asserts quid pro quo in the infamous July 25, 2019 telephone call between President Trump and the newly elected Ukrainian President.  The manuscript is still embargoed by the National Security Council pending a security review to prevent disclosure of classified information while also allowing Bolton to tell his story.  Who leaked the manuscript?  How come the Times provided no direct quotations from the manuscript?
  

If the House Managers’ argue that the public should hear from witnesses, then why has Congressman Adam Schiff prevented the public release of the transcript from a hearing where the Intelligence Community Inspector General (ICIG) testified?  There were 18 witnesses.  Seventeen transcripts have been made public—and President Trump’s defense lawyers cited several of these transcripts to provide to the Senate a clearer perspective and arguably weaken impeachment arguments.  Schiff refuses to make public the IG testimony; yet, he argues that the President is not allowed executive privilege.  Schiff forgets the President is not a  prime minister in a parliamentary government.

  

What is so damaging about the ICIG’s testimony?  This is where the IG provided information about the leaker (called a whistleblower in order to legitimize a kangaroo court carried out in former President Obama’s terms, “by the book.”).  The picture about how this “trigger” for an impeachment came about is not one Adam Schiff, on behalf of his coconspirators, want the public to know.

 What are the implications?

On Friday, The New York Times published an opinion by David Leonhardt,  “L’état, c’est Trump.”  The title borrows from a French expression, “l’état, c’est moi,” which translates into English, “the state, it is I” or “I am the state.”  The historical context relates to King Louis XIV, who held absolute power for 72 years.

           Leonhardt alleges Trump wields similar absolute power because the Republican majority in the Senate, apparently intimidated by Trump’s power, refused to go along with the tyrannical power exercised by the Democrat majority in the House of Representatives.


           Leonhardt’s first paragraph states (bold italics are mine): “The United States is not an authoritarian country. President Trump has failed to carry out many of his authoritarian impulses — like, say, banning Muslims from entering the United States or jailing his political opponents.”  Contrary to Leonhardt’s framing, the travel ban was against specific countries of the world that are known for Islamist terrorism and poor security screening practices.  President Trump had his Constitutional legal authority blocked multiple times and through multiple courts, which he honored until the US Supreme Court ruled that the ban was legally authorized.  An authoritarian (such as a predecessor who ruled by “a pen and a phone” and defied court rulings) would have ignored the judicial pushback.  President Trump honored ALL court injunctions (over 40 so far) while appealing lower court rulings.


           As for jailing political opponents, who has been jailed by President Trump’s Administration?  No one.  Yet, members within President Trump’s political orbit have been jailed—all stemming from the Democrat-fueled witch hunt called the Trump-Russia collusion:  George Papadopoulos, Paul Manafort, and Michael Cohen.  Carter Page escaped prosecution and now has his own lawsuit underway for being the victim of illegal surveillance.  Lieutenant General Michael Flynn is still battling his own prosecution and has already been financially destroyed as he has had to finance his own legal defense.  Roger Stone has also suffered prosecution after a CNN-aired raid on his home in the darkness of night by two dozen, heavily armed FBI agents.  Leonhardt’s imagined “l’état, c’est Trump” was unable to thwart these efforts.


           Leonhardt then says the following in his second paragraph:

And yet, the events that have taken place in the Senate this week would nonetheless have been unimaginable for most of our modern history. They are the makings of authoritarianism — in which the party in power decides it can reject democratic principles for the simple reason that it holds power.

Many Americans in today’s America have not been taught lessons of our modern history.  Hitler and Mussolini did not seize power.  They exploited conditions in democratic societies.  They amplified conditions (like identity politics, propaganda similar to today’s privileged versus oppressed, etc.) to promote agitated populations while promising hope and change.  As I have written in previous articles, the Soviet Communist International promoted democracies in Eastern European nations because they could then use the weaknesses of democracy to “democratically” advance socialism as the necessary transition to communism.  None of these developments were advanced by an educated general public.  They moved forward by political elite.

In her seminal work, The Origins of Totalitarianism, Hannah Arendt devoted a chapter about cronyism: “The Political Emancipation of the Bourgeoisie.”  Do we see our nation’s billionaires and social media giants aligning with Donald Trump?  Hitler and Mussolini’s agendas benefitted from what is called corporatism, where money and political power align for self-interest.

Leonhardt continues the morally superior smearing in his third paragraph:

A majority of senators, all Republican, are not interested in hearing evidence of presidential wrongdoing. Many are on the verge of accepting Trump’s argument, made by his lawyer, Alan Dershowitz, that any action a president takes to help his chances of re-election is, by definition, in the national interest. The nation, according to this argument, is indistinguishable from the president.

     

To suggest Republican Senators are not interested in hearing evidence of wrongdoing is slanderous because Leonhardt presumes he knows what these Senators believe.  The problem with presumption is that it is not based on known facts, but on one’s predisposition and all its inherent biases.  Those closely following these political actions can see that the left is trying to prove James Carville’s assertion in the Clinton impeachment effort that “a good prosecutor can get any grand jury to indict a ham sandwich.”  In my opinion, a fair trial would start with the testimony, under cross examination, of the plaintiff’s allegation of a crime.  Yet, the so called whistleblower has been put into the witness protection program.  Republican Senators are fully aware of this maneuvering; yet are made to feel guilty by House Managers if they don’t go along with their tactics.

Rarely have I heard, but it more accurately identifies the real crime for which President Trump is being impeached, he was not ordained to win the election.  If they can’t remove him now as a “clear and present danger” (according to the left), then they will keep doing whatever they can to keep him from being reelected.  Only the left can influence elections.

Leonhardt and his anti-Dershowitz faction distort Dershowitz’s argument.  First, he completely supports the President’s Constitutional authority under Article II to carry out the political agenda for which he was elected but not free to engage in bribery, treason or comparable crimes called high crimes and misdemeanors.  Second, the President campaigns and conducts his agenda for what he believes is in the national interest.  If his reading of that national interest is correct, then it bodes well for his political support.  Call it self-interest, if you insist.

  

Does anyone know of a politician that does not campaign or perform based on self-interest?  I know there are exceptions, such as voting one’s conscience, knowing he or she may pay a price in their next election.  Colorado Senator Corey Gardner is such an exception.

  

Today, one of the House Managers spoke about the courage of a West Point graduate and his testimony that was critical of President Trump.  I wrote about the irony of the West Pointer’s role in this article:  “’Duty Honor, Country’ versus Justification.”  As a Service Academy graduate, I would be interested in meeting with this West Point graduate to learn more about his motivations.  Of course, Service Academy cultures have evolved over time.  More recently, West Point exposed cadets to toxic masculinity.  Of concern, the injection of this type of social engineering is what C. S. Lewis wrote about in the 1940s in his book, The Abolition of Man, where he talked about “men without chests,” eunuchs, and the conditioners and conditioned.  Of course, Lewis’s backdrop were the authoritarian regimes that had emerged during this era.

      

As the impeachment episode approaches its finish on Wednesday, let us not forget actions taken before the 2016 presidential election to facilitate desired outcomes and efforts since:  the Steele Dossier, FISA warrants to indirectly spy on Trump through associates, and the Mueller investigation.  We now know, based on Department of Justice Horowitz’s investigation, that President Trump and those in his political orbit were targeted and punished by members of our government and media (Lee Smith’s The Plot Against the President provides detailed evidence of collusion between government individuals and journalists to advance fake news).

Pundits predict President Trump will be found not guilty by the Senate.  Yet, this will not bring justice to the President or America.  The left will argue that the Senate’s Constitutional obligation to try the case did not reflect a fair trial, and this will be enough to raise funds for the 2020 Democrat elections at all levels.  The Mueller investigation drew out its proceedings, which was successful in turning the House of Representatives in 2016.  Are there enough registered Democrats with the capacity and prudence to understand what is at play in America?

As much as leftists like David Leonhardt want us to believe President Trump is an authoritarian ruler, there is no evidence to support this belief.  On the other hand, there is a concept that we typically hear about as it relates to other nations, such as North Korea, Iraq, Iran, Syria, and so forth:  regime change.

  

It seems bizarre that an individual who the left believes to be an authoritarian apparently lacks the power to reign in leaks and other efforts by members of his Administration to undermine his authority. American Administrations have always theoretically been a regime that reflects values of the public interest.  In his book, The Plot Against the President, Lee Smith concludes his investigative journalism with this observation:

“Deep State” is another way to describe what classical philosophers meant by the word “regime.”  It refers not only to a form of government but also to the values and virtues that form of government prizes and the leading persons who embody them.  Thus, many of the leading persons of the United States’ political bureaucracy had starring roles in the coup (p. 333).

2020 elections will reflect to what extent an unelected authoritarian regime remains in power.  In the meantime, many Americans wonder what will happen with the Barr-Durham criminal investigations—surely some known members of the leftist regime should be held accountable to ensure justice.  It is quite possible that Attorney General Barr will be constrained by potential accusations of political bias and thus will wait until after the 2020 elections to press forward with indictments and trials.  The risk in waiting is that if Democrats are successful in securing power in the Executive and Legislative Branches, a new Attorney General may find ways of making Barr and Durham investigations go away.

What I am suggesting by the above paragraph is that the stakes are very high.  Our Constitutional Republic remains on thin ice because we clearly have an authoritarian regime:  Democrats, an unelected bureaucracy, and an echo chamber media.  To this regime, power is more important than truth and justice, even the public interest.