It Became Necessary to Destroy the Country in Order to Save It...
Institutional Corruption under the guise of "protecting Democracy" is the true existential threat to Amercia
Corruption has always been with us. It is an inescapable part of the human condition, But lately, it seems as if there is corruption everywhere, in every corner of America, and especially among our Political and Cultural “Elites.”
It is almost as if these “Elites” see America as a decaying husk, fallen beyond repair, and ripe for the picking… that the only thing left now to do is loot its desicated corpse for whatever may be left of value. Indeed, I’ve long thought that the main message being broadcast by our broken culture here in the early 2020’s is to grab as much as you can, as fast as you can, however you can… and let the consequences be damned. Hardly anyone even pretends to believe in a higher purpose anymore… higher purposes, it seems, are for suckers .
And if that is the way we’re going to play the game here in late-stage America, then it’s worth taking a moment to think about what comes next.
Let’s start with the good old-fashioned pocket-lining brand of corruption, of the sort that has been industrialized lately by folks like the Clintons via their “Global Initiative” grift, and the Bidens via Burisma, Rosemont Seneca and shady commercial art galleries across DC and New York.
Just in the last couple of weeks there have been at least three stories of this kind of corruption that have broken at the highest levels of both Federal and State Governments.
The first involved the bribing of US Secret Service agents by what are now assumed to have been Iranian assets… though I suppose what made this story so shocking was not that the Secret Service can be bought, we take such things for granted now in our new post-modern age, but how cheaply they can be purchased. If you were to guess that the price was a six pack of Miller High Life and a ham sandwich, you’d not be far off.
The Second story was the downfall of the Lieutenant Governor of New York, Brian Benjamin, who was forced to resign after being indicted on Federal corruption charges. For those of you keeping score at home, that’s one (1) New York Governor and one (1) New York Lieutenant Governor booted out of office on corruption charges in less than six months… perhaps current Governor and notorious lightweight Kathy Hochul can go for for the trifecta before she must face the voters in November…
And Finally, we had the case of Louisiana State Senator Kathy Carter Peterson who, like Brian Benjamin, was forced to resign after news came to light of a Federal investigation into her finances. What was unique about Carter Peterson’s case was the way in which she attempted to wriggle out of it. She immediately tried to claim, as all such scoundrels eventually do, that it was she who was the victim. She is, you will no doubt be completely shocked to learn, an addict… specifically, she’s a gambling addict.
But it was the manner in which she described this addiction that struck me as the oddest, and most bizarrely brilliant, portion of her statement. Said Karen…
“I want you to know that this addiction and this disease is insidious. Many people suffer from it. It’s the highest rate of suicide of all addictions.”
Translation: “lay off, or I might commit suicide, and that would probably be your fault.”
If that was indeed the gambit, then it was spectacularly successful … unlike poor Brian Benjamin who resigned and was immediately arrested, to the lament of precisely no one, local New Orleans media reported that Peterson’s remarks “prompted an outpouring of sympathy on social media from fellow legislators and friends, many of whom applauded her courage.”
Her courage… god help us.
But political corruption is not the only crime eating away at the American Soul. Ethically challenged Politicians railing taxpayers like the gimp in Zed’s basement isn’t the only flavor of malfeasance lurking in the back alleys of America’s collective psyche. We have also the corruption of critical American insitututions to consider. And consider it, we shall. Because of the two crimes, Institutional Corruption is the more corrosive to a healthy Democracy.
The title of this post was inspired by a recent essay at Ace of Spades HQ, in which lead Blogger “Ace” paraphrased an infamously Orwellian statement from an American Officer in Viet Nam who attempted to explain why a Vietnamese village needed to be burned down. The village was being used as a safe haven for the Viet Cong and, according to this American Officer, the only way to liberate the village from the clutches of the Communists was to burn the village to the ground so that it could no longer be used by anyone… thus could the village be “saved.” Where the villagers would live after the fires burned themselves out and the smoke cleared, is a question that was never asked or answered.
Ace’s argument is that all of the most important Govermental and private sector Insitutions upon which the foundations of the American Experiment were built, have been subverted by The Left. The mission statements and moral frameworks which have animated Institutions like The Media, Academia and almost every agency of our Government for decades, centuries even, have been abandoned entirely in the pursuit of raw power (you’ll recall that higher purposes are now only for suckers). And because even the most committed Progressive cannot stand to acknowledge the Tyrannical truth of what they have done, they have given this moral subjugation a new and euphemistic name…
They call it “Saving Our Democracy.”
Ace provides several examples, but whether the current crisis began when IRS functionary Lois Lerner decided to try and strangle the Tea Party baby in its crib by using her power to deny various “patriot groups” the tax-discounted funding they needed to survive, or whether it really began when anti-photogenic illicit lovers Peter Strzok and Lisa Page decided to turn their agency into a “backstop” to prevent President Trump from performing his Constitutional mandate to implement Government policy as America’s Chief Executive, is a question that is up for debate. But you would not be wrong to choose either of the above.
For me, the question of when it began was at least partially answered by CNN’s Brian Stelter, during a recent appearance on a “Disinformation Panel” at the University of Chicago, which he chaired alongside many other luminaries from the truth and honesty brigades… a separate panel at the same event was audaciously chaired by President Barack “if you like your plan you can keep your plan” Obama, himself.
Much has been made of Stelter’s dodging Matrix-esque response to a Conservative Student’s point-by-point recitation of the various Disinformation campaigns waged by Stelter and his parent Network CNN over the last five years, from Russian Collusion to Hunter’s Laptop being a Russian fake to charges that Brett Kavanaugh ran a sophisticated rape ring out of a series of high school parties.
But it was later in the program where Stelter made his most interesting, and alarming claim. He suggested that the job of the News Media is to “Protect Democracy.” This is a claim he has made over and over throughout his career, and there’s only one minor problem with it… it’s not true.
The job of the New Media is, and has always been, to provide Americans with the information they need to understand their world, and to deliver that information as clearly and objectively as possible. Do that job well, it used to be said, and you are by definition “Protecting Democracy”… do it poorly on the other hand and, well, you are not.
The problem with the idea of “Protecting Democracy” is that it doesn’t mean anything or, more precisely, it means something different to everyone. That’s why we have political parties and “free” elections… every couple of years both sides, through their political parties, make their best case for how best to “protect Democracy” and then we decide at the ballot box.
We decide. Not Mark Zuckerberg… not the faculty at Oberlin… not Jeff Bezos… not some bureaucrat at the CDC… not the weird theater lady who runs the new Ministry of Truth.. and certainly not Brian Stelter.
We’ve managed without their meaty hotdog thumbs on the scale for nearly two and a half centuries… surely we can manage without them for a few more.
The thing about corruption is… it gets easier the more you do it… and the first crime is always the hardest. But all forms of corruptions are not equal. We treat financial corruption much more harshly in America than we treat the systemic corruption of Institutions. In America, if you engage in the former and are caught, you can expect to go to jail. But when it comes to the latter category of crime, almost no one faces any real consequences for their actions… certainly Lois Lerner, Lisa Page and Peter Strzok did not. And it remains to be seen if Clinton lawyer and co-architect of the Russia Collusion hoax Michael Sussman will see any jail time, but my advice is to place all your money (assuming you have any left here in the Biden “economy”) on “no.”
The way we treat these two types of corruption is, it seems to me, exactly backwards. Who is hurt by the petty corruption of financial crimes? At the end of the day, whether the money goes to pay off Karen Carter Peterson’s debts at the Casino or into the Government’s coffers so that they can pay for more “Tree Equity”, the temperature of the water in my pool remains unchanged. Sure, it may be infuriating, but it does not put “our Democracy” in existential peril.
On the other hand… when the Institutions that are meant to serve a larger Democratic purpose are willfully corrupted in the pursuit of raw power… when the Media decides, for instance, that it is no longer their job to bring us the unvarnished news, but to actively amplify stories that support their preferred narative while burying any news that runs contrary to that narrative, there is no limit to the amount of evil that can result. I’m going to risk bringing down the wrath of Godwin upon myself here, but yes, I’m afraid that at this point, we must bring up the Nazis.
I’ve spent a lot of time in these essays talking about Stanley Kramer’s 1961 star-studded Courtroom drama JUDGMENT AT NUREMBERG. I do that because our Nation often feels as if it is standing upon the edge of a knife, and JUDGMENT AT NUREMBERG remains the clearest analysis, and the starkest warning, about how Hitler rose to power and how his armies came within a hair’s breadth of conquering the World, that Hollywood has ever produced.
JUDGMENT AT NUREMBERG is the story of a fictional Nuremberg Nazi Trial, one of many real life trials that occured in the wake of World War II. On trial in the film is a former High Court Judge named Ernst Janning (Burt Lancaster) who stands accused of crimes against humanity.
It’s important to understand that Ernst Janning is not on trial for participating directly in the Holocaust… rather he is on trial for corrupting the insitution he served (The Justice System) in such a way that not only made the Holocaust possible, but inevitable. For without men like Janning, who were willing to use Nazi interpretations of the law to convict men of capital crimes even when they knew these men to be innocent, the Holocaust would not have occured. Janning’s unjust convictions were the initial crime that made all the other crimes easier to commit.
NUREMBERG is a great movie, one that is full of great speeches and compelling testimony. But the speech which bears most on our discussion here is the closing argument given by Judge Dan Haywood (Spencer Tracy) in which he explains the rationale for his decision. Before we discuss how his words speak to our current political moment, please take a minute (or, 6 minutes and 41 seconds to be exact) to watch it.
Let’s assume for the sake of argument that Donald Trump did indeed represent a terrible existential threat to “our Democracy.” I think that possibility is belied by the fact that he lost his bid for re-election, but for the moment let’s concede the point. Would it then be OK to subvert America’s most critical Institutions, like a free and impartial press, in order to stop him? Would any action taken to stop Donald Trump be justified? Could the United States survive a situation where '“by any means necessary” literally meant by “ANY” means necessary?
There are two ways to answer this question. Only two…
You can take Ernst Janning’s side, or you can take Dan Haywood’s.
Those of us who come down on Judge Haywood’s side, the side in opposition to the Brian Stelters of the world, believe that the answer is no. We believe this because in a Democracy, process matters above all else. In a pitched battle with true evil, process is critical because it is often the only thing that differentiates good from evil.
“This trial has shown that under the stress of a national crisis, men - even able and extraordinary men - can delude themselves into the commission of crimes and atrocities so vast and heinous as to stagger the imagination… How easily that can happen! There are those in our country today, too, who speak of the "protection" of the country. Of "survival". The answer to that is: “survival as what?” A country isn't a rock. And it isn't an extension of one's self. It's what it stands for, when standing for something is the most difficult!*
“A country is not an extension of oneself…” Haywood thunders… “it’s what it stands for, when standing for something is the most difficult!” But not if you’re a modern-day media activist, in which case Government is never more than an extension of your own personal policy desires, which you conveniently define as “protecting Democracy”… because when you’re in the business of “protecting Democracy”… anything goes. How could it not? Democracy is literally at stake!
Except, who gets to define which polices protect Democracy and which policies tear Democracy down? Well, Brian Stelter of course. And isn’t that convenient…
At the end of JUDGMENT AT NUREMBERG, Janning asks to see Haywood in his cell. Janning has come to terms with Haywood’s decision and, in fact, did not want or expect absolution from the Court for his crimes. But because he respects Haywood the Jurist, he does desire personal absolution from Haywood the Man. But their meeting does not go the way Janning hopes it will.
Haywood is making the devastating point that without Janning (and many others like him, of course) there could not have been a “Final Solution.” Janning’s crime was the crime that made all the other unspeakable crimes possible.
One final thought… consider this… we live in a media ecosystem, backed by hyper-partisan enforcers at the most powerful technology companies ever created, where people like Brian Stelter suppress stories that are true in order to help their preferred candidates (Hunter’s laptop; the COVID lab leak theory), while creating fake stories out of thin air to damage candidates they dislike (Russian Collusion; Brett Kavanaugh’s rape trains). At the same time, they send out shock troops like Taylor Lorenz to track down and dox dissidents in order to intimidate those who would challenge the administration. And all of this is happening in the context of the President’s decision to create a literal Ministry of Truth, to be led by a hyper-partisan woman who presents as a raving lunatic.
Do we not see where this is headed?
Can we not imagine a time in the near future where a judge might visit a repentant Brian Stelter in his jail cell and say to him “Brian, it came to that the first time you suppressed a story you knew to be true”?
Perhaps more terrifying than this scenario is the one where this jailhouse meeting never occurs because Brian and his collgeagues were successful and won the war for control of what information we are allowed to see and hear and speak.
The first crime is always the hardest… every subsequent crime gets progressively easier.
READER NOTE: The news of the Supreme Court leak broke as I was putting this essay to bed… as this piece was already getting long I have elected not to futher complicate things and to keep this piece focused on the corruption of our Fourth Estate, but to call it “shocking” and “unprecedented” (as former AG Bill Barr did) perhaps does not do this act of Institutional Corruption justice. Whatever you call it, it is clearly an escalation by the Anti-Democratic forces who seek to tear down the Ameircan Experiment, and it is yet another step on an increasingly steep path towards a dark and uncertain future. As Bari Weiss described it… “(the leak is) nothing more than the most recent salvo in our race to the bottom.” If all the Insitutional Corruption that came before helped to make this current “unprecedented” assault on the integrity of the Court possible, one shudders to think what futher degredations might be lurking in the dark, waiting for us, when we finally do hit bottom.