“The Republicans,” said Tucker Carlson — speaking of elected Republicans — “who really do hate their own voters in a way that’s pathological, are just re-upping the spy laws to allow the Biden Administration to spy on their voters.”
Mr. Carlson is not wrong, at least about Republican leaders aiding Democrats in spying on conservatives and others who sometimes vote GOP.
Yes, the federal government’s surveillance and criminal “justice” apparatus has been directed by Democrats — the Biden Administration specifically, and whoever runs that — to target, as The Enemy, conservatives and others associated with (or merely adjacent to) the Republican Party.
This cannot be dismissed as a conspiracy theory. Democratic thought leaders pushed this new anti-terrorism paradigm from the first moments of the Biden Administration, in public.
Or at least on MSNBC, where John Brennan clearly reconceived opposition to his Democratic Party as a movement looking “very similar to insurgency movements that we’ve seen overseas.”
“Even libertarians,” he said, constituted “an insidious threat” to, not the Democratic Party, but “our Democracy.”
This perspectival shift, of seeing policy and political opposition as “insurgency,” is key to the new anti-democratic mindset.
And very real. It could end our small-r republican experiment.
Which brings us back to Republican politicians and their willingness to let Democrats institute a permanent pogrom against all who oppose Democrats’ big government programs.
Why do this? Out of hatred? Disdain? Fear?
Let’s not ignore the age-old impulse of politicians to squelch the speech of opponents. The longer in office, the more these careerists tend to view their own constituents as threats. After all, anyone might freely offer a complaint that emboldens or comforts the opposition. This is a bipartisan principle.
Better an enforced silence about the dictates of Washington, sadly, if you are a Washingtonian delivering dictates.
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
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3 replies on “The Citizen Threat”
Why, really? The two major parties just want the same thing—power….
Politics is largely rôle-playing all-around. Most politicians simply dress-up as populists; as “progressives”; as socialists; as conservatives; as neo-conservatives; as neo-liberals; and, when we were young, they dressed-up as liberals, as segregationists, as integrationists. As fashions within their target constituencies evolve, these politicians begin to dress differently, sometimes tripping over the accessories as they change costume.
The Republican Party, as the major party opposed to the Democrats, shelters most of the few elected politicians who actually oppose the distinctive policies of the Democrats. But, for the most part, Republicans are and always have been rôle-players. From the era of Hoover until that of Reagan — with some disturbance in 1964 — the Republican Party was the party of me-too-but-slower “progressives”. During the eight years of Reagan, they dressed as conservatives or as neo-conservatives. From the beginning of the GHW Bush Administration until shortly after the pitiful end of the GW Bush Administration, they dressed as neo-conservatives. During the Obama Administration, they struggled over whether to dress as paleo-conservatives. Trump got them dressing as populists.
The term “RINO” (“Republican in name only”) has been directed at those Republicans who either have refused to follow the latest fashion, or have done a poor job of pretense. But, really, the epitomal, most genuine members are often exactly those members dismissed with “RINO”. Those who call these politicians “RINO” are sometimes just lacking a sense both of history and of recent history, but more often engaged in their own rôle-playing.
The General Election of 2016 showed that the Republican base could rebel against the leadership of the Republican Party, who wanted a third Bush as the nominee. But that base could not coördinate themselves to make a better choice than Trump. Whether selected by the leadership or otherwise, almost every Republican nominee is yet another son of a b▇tch. The saner Republicans either defect, or think “Well, he’s a son of a b▇tch, but now he’s our son of a b▇tch.” (In the case of some nominees, the base can feminize the expression.)
Until and unless we are able to limit the power of entrenched politicians beholden to the ruling class, nothing will change.
Attempts to put power back with the people where it belongs are met with resistance and money from the ruling class, and, even if they win short-term approval, are eventually washed away by the lies of special interests.
It’s time to force a Constitutional convention to correct the errors made by the Founding Fathers, who apparently had never met the sin called Greed.