Shipwrecked by Our Betters

Holman W. Jenkins Jr. is a sober observer of America’s dysfunctional political culture. In his regular column for the Wall Street Journal, he often comments on the blatant corruption of mainstream media, which is now fused to the “deep state,” a cabal of high- and mid-level public officials, especially in our intelligence services, the FBI and CIA. The media and deep state worked together to legitimate and promote the Russian collusion hoax—the demonstrably false claim, fabricated by Democratic Party operatives, that Donald Trump’s presidential campaign in 2016 had received Russian support. A similar campaign of disinformation was repeated in 2020, when more than forty former intelligence officials signed a letter attesting that Hunter Biden’s laptop, which contained evidence of corruption on the part of his father, was probably a Russian hoax. The signatories knew that this claim was false, and the media used the disinformation to justify ignoring the story during the final months of Joe Biden’s campaign to defeat Trump.

Our betters are gearing up for another round of efforts to control political outcomes. This time, however, they are announcing their intentions beforehand. In a recent column, Jenkins notes:

For those whose concern about the Constitution isn’t a put-on, the dangerous refrain now, from Bill Kristol and James Carville to Hillary Clinton and every MSNBC pundit, is that a legal, legitimate Trump election would be the “end of democracy.” The alleged spirit of “democratic resistance” is in serious danger of becoming, if it hasn’t already, the monster against which it rages.

Faced with election results not to its liking, establishment power is talking itself into the use of extra-constitutional means to “save our democracy.” This surreal situation reminds me of the Vietnam War adage that it is necessary to destroy the village in order to save it.

It’s not just the United States. In recent German regional elections, the conservative upstart party Alternative für Deutschland (AfD) surged to second and third place. The response of German Chancellor Olaf Scholz was to call for the “defense of democracy.” He told a journalist, “The votes that have gone to a right-wing populist party in Germany must worry us.” The AfD has been hobbled by infighting. It is not an entirely coherent party. But voters correctly see that voting for its candidates amounts to a vote of no confidence in the German ruling class and its priorities, especially on matters of immigration and European integration. Apparently, expressions of dissent in the polling booth are not permitted in “our democracy.”

The German establishment has a very powerful tool for controlling elections. When the country was reconstituted under Allied supervision, it established the Bundesamt für Verfassungsschutz, the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution. This government agency has opened an investigation of the AfD as a “suspected case,” and it has the power to dissolve the party by declaring it illegal. This prospect is not remote. In August, German president (a largely ceremonial position) Frank-Walter Steinmeier said, “We all have it in our hands to put those who despise our democracy in their place.” The next day, a leading German newspaper ran an editorial titled “Verfassungsfeinde verbieten!” (“Ban the enemies of the constitution!”). These pious calls to nullify elections when they don’t produce the desired outcomes are ironic, given that leading AfD politicians are routinely harassed by left-wing activists, even to the point of death threats and physical attacks during election events.

Pierre Manent has rued what he calls “the fanaticism of the center.” Jenkins is right to warn that this fanaticism—not populism—poses a clear and present danger. The Great and the Good have abused their institutional authority so blatantly that a growing number of voters are rebelling. The lies designed to justify the Covid lockdowns and to cover up the virus’s origin in an American-funded lab in Wuhan have been documented. Climate science, too, is perverted by political manipulation. Medical journals kowtow to critical race theory. Writing for Tablet magazine (“A Guide to Understanding the Hoax of the Century”), Jacob Siegel details how the post-9/11 counterterrorism apparatus was reengineered to wage a “war on disinformation.” The upshot is a close partnership between government officials and technology companies that has erected a censorship regime. Again, echoes of Vietnam: violating democratic norms to save democratic norms.

Polarization is a problem. But we need to be clear about its origins. Our betters have manipulated and politicized institutions that should be reliable and trustworthy anchors of society. The universities offer an obvious instance. The solemn 2020 pronouncement by public health officials that racism is a “public health emergency” and the adoption of BLM talking points by nearly every professional association discredited what was left of those intuitions’ authority. Does anyone still imagine that the American Bar Association is anything other than a fully owned asset of the Democratic Party? The decision of voters to support populist politicians reflects frustration over these betrayals.

As I have said on numerous occasions, a figure like Trump is a symptom, not the cause of our polarized society. Jenkins observes: “For years, although it goes denied, this temptation [to use institutional authority for partisan purposes] has been rampant in the media, the universities, the CIA and the FBI. The corruption of institutions, not the corruption of one man, is the real menace to our democracy.”