The most dangerous aspect of what the Democrats have done over the past 3 years ((and are continuing to do) isn’t really the process or the damage they have done to our governing institutions – it is that they have actively encouraged and condoned actions which, in the Obama years, would have had them screaming for prison sentences and executions.

Let us not forget that, in the first 5 years of his two terms, President Obama purged almost 200 senior officers – one in particular stands out in my memory, the case of Gen. Carter Ham who was relieved as head of U.S. Africa Command after only a year and a half because he disagreed with orders not to mount a rescue mission in response to the Sept. 11, 2012, attack in Benghazi.

“Purge” might be too harsh a term – in reality, it was made clear that key military leaders, mostly colonels – those lined up in rank to replace outgoing generals – would have to bend the knee to the Obama policies of “strategic patience (i.e. doing nothing and saying they did something). In contrast to the recent actions of Lt. Col. Alexander Vindman, who readily trotted to Capitol Hill to testify against a sitting president because he didn’t agree with policy, these officers respected the chain of command, then quietly and honorably resigned their commissions and took their careers in other directions.

Let us also remember that dissent was so criminalized during the Gilded Age of Obama, the officials at the Missouri State Fair banned a rodeo clown – for life – for the horrid and unspeakable crime of entertaining spectators during a bull riding contest while wearing an Obama mask.

No, it isn’t so much that the Democrats are abusing the oversight function of the House or that they have bastardized the impeachment process and turned it into a political weapon – it is that they are creating an aura of righteousness around the Deep State and its minions as if, as the NYT opined, these benevolent and munificent people only have our best interests in mind.

Such outright and tacit approval of Deep State power will eventually destroy any semblance of Lincoln’s “Government of the people, by the people and for the people” because it sanctions the Deep State to operate independently, by its own rules, for its own benefit and protects its members from scrutiny and consequences.

In my observations of both current events and history, it appears to me that the actions of the Democrat Party are pushing us backward and toward a government of Boss Tweed and Tammany Hall, a return to the spoils system where only those who agree with the precepts and policies of the ruling party burrow into the bureaucracy.

Some would say we are already there, that the spoils system was never truly eliminated. Each day that passes, I am more in agreement with what President Ronald Reagan said – the nine most terrifying words in the English language are: “I’m from the government and I’m here to help.”