I can recall only three instances of gasping aloud in response to a plot twist. Being a child of the 1980s, I had the privilege of seeing Darth Vader announce to Luke Skywalker, “I am your father,” as a surprise in the movie theater. But since then, most plot twists failed to measure up until October of 2017 when I learned that Hillary Clinton commissioned the now-infamous Steele dossier accusing Donald Trump of colluding with the Russians. Although holes had already emerged in the narrative, I had fundamental trust in the FBI up until that moment. Since then, FBI leadership, including current Director Christopher Wray, have confirmed my worst suspicions by working to protect the conspirators and resisting accountability.
But nothing beats the moment I learned that the sainted and holy Dr. Anthony Fauci advocated and helped fund “gain-of-function” research on bat coronaviruses at the Wuhan Institute of Virology, the facility from which we now believe COVID-19 originated. Unlike Mary Shelly’s allegorical story in which Dr. Frankenstein’s unnatural creation follows him to the ends of the earth for a final reckoning, Fauci has largely shrugged off the damning evidence of his role in loosing the COVID-19 monster upon the world. He’s suffered some loss of legitimacy but nevertheless continues to be propped up as the face of the “expert” response to the virus. Even though he almost certainly knew better, Fauci stayed quiet while Big Tech censored legitimate stories pointing to evidence of the lab leak origin.
Likewise, Clinton’s duplicity in diverting campaign money to fund the dirtiest trick in campaign history remains unaddressed in the Federal Election Commission, in spite of a three-year-old complaint laying out the conspiracy in painstaking detail.
Meanwhile, the politicized criminal justice system has launched a prosecution against the Trump organization for providing untaxed corporate perks to its CFO. I’m not defending that practice but I question whether this theory has ever been applied to pursue politically compliant corporations. Are all corporate executives being taxed on their use of corporate-owned jets, apartments, and luxury skyboxes in stadiums? Or does that obligation only apply to Trump-aligned executives?
We’ve moved past the point where the Left bothers to deny the apparent double-standard in political prosecutions and censorship. There is no scale of justice anymore. There is no blindfold. The intellectual Left, to the extent it still exists, has largely forgotten the ideal that the law should be neutral and blind to political affiliation. It’s a weapon and the Left has no intention of holstering it out of fairness.
Similarly, a few leftist intellectuals have quietly acknowledged that the Big Tech censorship of the Hunter Biden laptop stories was a mistake. But the censorship worked and probably saved the election for Biden. So, for the most part, like the prosecutorial abuses, the ability to censor “dangerous” conservative speech is seen as a necessary tool to achieve greater agenda aims.
But there are loose ends unravelling even today. The leftist juggernaut has stepped on the toes of apolitical but influential forces within our society.
First, the COVID-19 response was so heavy-handed (and ineffectual) that a huge swath of the American people have begun to question the sacrifices they were forced to make. Talk of a COVID-19 Delta-variant lockdown remix is being greeted with a very chilly reception by ordinary Americans. And there is still a bill to pay for all of those people who died agonizing deaths in nursing homes because of Cuomo-style executive orders banning exclusion of COVID-infected residents. The Left’s legitimacy on COVID-19 is further undercut by the increasing evidence that effective COVID-19 therapies were suppressed and censored.
Second, the Russia Collusion hoax chickens are still coming home to roost. As noted by the ever-astute TechnoFog, there’s still litigation pending over the Steele dossier, which falsely accused Alfa Bank of being a front for a Russian conspiracy to interfere in the 2016 election. Perkins Coie (the Clinton law firm that commissioned the dossier) has been caught trying to buy off Alfa Bank by circumventing the bank’s attorneys. This is an apparent violation of D.C. Rule of Professional Conduct 4.2, which prohibits lawyers from talking directly to another lawyer’s client without permission.
While we know that Perkins Coie and any “get-Trump”-aligned attorneys are essentially immune to ethics complaints (we’re still waiting for convicted felon Kevin Clinesmith to be disbarred for lying to the FISA court to illegally surveil Carter Page), it’s still noteworthy that Perkins Coie is so desperate to avoid sunlight on their dark election shenanigans.
Likewise, while conservatives see business-as-usual in the left-wing censorship and authoritarianism under the COVID-19 response, other powerful but non-partisan interests have been surprised by the severe harm inflicted on them as collateral damage. Landlords, as one example, many of whom invested their life savings into rental properties, were forced to maintain living quarters for non-paying tenants for more than a year. Parents who once placed complete trust in their public education system suddenly found themselves called to action against counterproductive school closings and politicized classroom curriculum. Advocates who wailed crocodile tears over Trump putting “babies in cages” find themselves uncomfortably mute as censors failed to hide evidence of Biden filling detention centers with fresh batches of immigrant children separated from their families.
A great many suburban women permanently outraged by the recording of Trump’s ungentlemanly remarks about women are starting to notice the upswing in crime. The Black Lives Matter and “Defund the Police” posters in rich suburban neighborhoods are quietly coming down as soccer moms have discretely purchased a record number of handguns.
Conservatives are out-of-power in the first, second, and fourth branches of the federal government. Even in the Supreme Court, a split exists among the Republican-appointed justices. Yet the conservatives have a counterintuitive upper hand when it comes to ideas and legitimacy. As the Left increasingly requires brute force to win, it alienates apolitical America. With the exception of a not-insignificant number of political prosecutions (the Russia Collusion hoax and the January 6 dragnet), the Left has largely flinched at imposing the kind of terror tactics necessary to enforce its extreme ideology.
Americans are getting sick and tired of the Left. They’re assholes. They’re bossy and rude. And they’re really terrible at managing everything when they get power. Old-guard liberals have begun to criticize censorship and the cancel mob. The Left has morphed from a liberal philosophy to a neo-Maoist authoritarian movement. Without any help from conservatives, the Left is teaching a crash course on the perils of politicizing everything. Americans are starting to wake up. In Congress, the Left has failed to achieve many of its priorities as moderate Democrats feel emboldened to blue dog their own party.
Unless the Left starts cracking some skulls (literally), Americans will simply walk away.