Observers from the Right have been warning the Democratic Party is trying to establish a “one-party system.” Evidence for this prediction is so overwhelming that I wouldn’t even dispute it. From plans to pack the Supreme Court, to maintain a permanent Democratic-Left majority, to pushing for an open borders policy that would make it possible to enroll loads more Democratic voters, to enfranchising convicted felons, to using a Senate majority to create two new Democratic states—the District of Columbia and Puerto Rico—it should be clear where all this is leading.
We also find other items on the Democratic wish list that warrant attention, for example, measures taken in Democratic-run states to send out unsolicited ballots, which Democratic vote-harvesters could return, and a national ban on voter identification laws. Such demands may turn elections into meaningless rituals for legitimating a leftist stranglehold on government.
Riots by what Tucker Carlson aptly characterized as the “Biden voters” did not happen by chance. The Democratic Party and the overwhelmingly Democratic media condoned and even incited these “peaceful protests,” and former Vice President Biden’s staff labored mightily to bail out apprehended perpetrators of violence in order to put them back onto the streets. This is standard operating procedure for political movements trying to seize power. After World War II, the Soviets arranged for mob violence in Hungary, Poland, and other countries they occupied as preparation for the imposition of a Communist dictatorship. This violence, authorities claimed, proved the need for a new order.
The Nazi Brown Shirts wrought havoc in Weimar Germany that Hitler then insisted only his rule would end. While Brown Shirts battled with real Communists on the streets of German cities, our media have less credible street enemies. The best they can come up with is the mostly powerless, racially integrated Proud Boys, policemen who killed or wounded several black men with long criminal records, and President Trump’s indelicate phraseology. Apparently, these troublemakers, not the Democratic-friendly BLM and Antifa, were behind the mayhem and looting during the “Summer of Violence.”
Unfortunately, the party carrying out the coup enjoys a near-majority of voters. The electorate that is going along with the destruction of our constitutional order has responded favorably both to the media and what claims to be our educational system. We are also saddled with racial tensions that add to our political instability.
And perhaps even more unsettling, we have a mass media and a culture industry that are invested in the coup.
Please note that when Hitler took power, his party never exceeded 36.8 percent of the popular vote, which it reached in a Reichstag election in July 1932. (By the end of 1932 that total fell to 33.1 percent). Moreover, the German press was far more politically diverse in 1932 than what Trump denounces with some justification as our “lying media.” The action of electronic media giants, which now routinely suppress news that could harm the American Left, confirms the obvious. The media no longer even pretend to observe bourgeois niceties when they cancel the other side, any more than our “institutions of higher learning” hide their intolerance when they root out and shame dissenters.
Despite these ominous signs, it seems unlikely that the United States will actually become a “one-party system.” This will not happen even if the Left takes over. Instead, the leftist dictatorship that may befall us will try to preserve certain democratic arrangements pro forma.
Since democracies are supposed to have opposition parties, the new rulers will create such an opposition. It will look like the permissible political competition in the former German Democratic Republic, where the ruling Communists supposedly headed a “unity coalition.” At least on paper, the German Communists took power by merging with the Social Democrats. They then brought into existence Blockflötenparteien, parties that were invented to offer the appearance of opposition without causing the regime any trouble.
It is easy to imagine who will perform this function in the United States in a virtual leftist dictatorship. Where shall I begin? Perhaps with the editors and writers of The Dispatch, the funders of the Lincoln Project, and the “Obamacon” Andrew Bacevich, who now wants to “detoxify” the Republican Party by working to defeat Trump.
An authorized writer on conservative thought, Bacevich endorsed Obama against two weak Republican presidential candidates, before going on to support Hillary Clinton and Joe Biden against the putative populist corrupters of the true Republican faith. Now he is offering to “save the Republican Party from itself.” No doubt Max Boot, Jennifer Rubin, and Bill Kristol could all be persuaded to join our Blockflöte, providing they would be allowed to implement a vigorously interventionist foreign policy.
We could also lure into this exceedingly friendly opposition James Kirchick, who combines anti-Trump neoconservative politics with vigorous advocacy of LGBT rights. This formal opposition should have no trouble convincing those in charge to embrace Kirchick’s crusade against the “homophobic” Vladimir Putin. The American Left has been pushing Russophobia since it began accusing Trump of “Russian collusion.”
Although our tolerated opposition would likely acquiesce in whatever measures against “prejudice” the new order introduced, it might also arrange favors for woke capitalist sponsors. After all, isn’t that what a “conservative” opposition is supposed to do?