Perhaps the most dangerous aspect of what the Democrats have done over the past 15 years or so (and continue to do) isn’t really the process or the damage they have done to our governing institutions. While that was and is devastating, the fact they have actively encouraged and condoned actions which, under a Republican administration, would have had them screaming for prison sentences and executions, have had the effect of emboldening the minions buried within the Deep State.

Let us not forget that, in the first 5 years of his two terms, President Obama purged almost 200 senior officers – one 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 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.

Tells you a lot about the kind of officers who progressed in rank and now command our military.

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 abused the oversight function of the House or that they bastardized the impeachment process and turned it into a political weapon – it is that they have created 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.

I recently posted an excerpt from George Orwell’s critique of James Burnham’s 1941 “The Managerial Revolution”. In it, Orwell wrote:

“Capitalism is disappearing, but Socialism is not replacing it. What is now arising is a new kind of planned, centralised society which will be neither capitalist nor, in any accepted sense of the word, democratic. The rulers of this new society will be the people who effectively control the means of production: that is, business executives, technicians, bureaucrats and soldiers, lumped together by Burnham, under the name of ‘managers’.”

Orwell was describing a technocracy, a planned, authoritarian, communistic society – just one using different titles for the players. Technocratic rule is based on the edicts of experts, essentially creating a superior class of technocrats controlled by dictators at the top. If the technocrats please their masters, they are awarded with status, influence, power, and position within the technocracy.

The recent public health “emergencies” created a new opportunity for implementation of technocratic rule.

Such outright and tacit approval of technocratic 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.

From our position in history, some 75 years after Orwell penned his critique, we can see a confirmation of the cyclical nature of history. He describes our current situation in stunning prescience (sorry for the long excerpt, but Orwell says it better than I can):

“For quite fifty years past the general drift has almost certainly been towards oligarchy. The ever-increasing concentration of industrial and financial power; the diminishing importance of the individual capitalist or shareholder, and the growth of the new ‘managerial’ class of scientists, technicians, and bureaucrats; the weakness of the proletariat against the centralised state; the increasing helplessness of small countries against big ones; the decay of representative institutions and the appearance of one-party régimes based on police terrorism, faked plebiscites, etc: all these things seem to point in the same direction. Burnham sees the trend and assumes that it is irresistible, rather as a rabbit fascinated by a boa constrictor might assume that a boa constrictor is the strongest thing in the world. When one looks a little deeper, one sees that all his ideas rest upon two axioms which are taken for granted in the earlier book and made partly explicit in the second one. They are:

1. Politics is essentially the same in all ages.
2. Political behaviour is different from other kinds of behaviour.

To take the second point first. In The Machiavellians, Burnham insists that politics is simply the struggle for power. Every great social movement, every war, every revolution, every political programme, however edifying and Utopian, really has behind it the ambitions of some sectional group which is out to grab power for itself. Power can never be restrained by any ethical or religious code, but only by other power. The nearest possible approach to altruistic behaviour is the perception by a ruling group that it will probably stay in power longer if it behaves decently. But curiously enough, these generalisations only apply to political behaviour, not to any other kind of behaviour. In everyday life, as Burnham sees and admits, one cannot explain every human action by applying the principle of cui bono? Obviously, human beings have impulses which are not selfish. Man, therefore, is an animal that can act morally when he acts as an individual, but becomes immoral when he acts collectively. But even this generalisation only holds good for the higher groups. The masses, it seems, have vague aspirations towards liberty and human brotherhood, which are easily played upon by power-hungry individuals or minorities. So that history consists of a series of swindles, in which the masses are first lured into revolt by the promise of Utopia, and then, when they have done their job, enslaved over again by new masters.

Political activity, therefore, is a special kind of behaviour, characterised by its complete unscrupulousness, and occurring only among small groups of the population, especially among dissatisfied groups whose talents do not get free play under the existing form of society. The great mass of the people — and this is where (2) ties up with (1) — will always be unpolitical. In effect, therefore, humanity is divided into two classes: the self-seeking, hypocritical minority, and the brainless mob whose destiny is always to be led or driven, as one gets a pig back to the sty by kicking it on the bottom or by rattling a stick inside a swill-bucket, according to the needs of the moment. And this beautiful pattern is to continue for ever. Individuals may pass from one category to another, whole classes may destroy other classes and rise to the dominant position, but the division of humanity into rulers and ruled is unalterable. In their capabilities, as in their desires and needs, men are not equal. There is an ‘iron law of oligarchy’, which would operate even if democracy were not impossible for mechanical reasons.”

My mind has been preoccupied with consideration of the stunning incompetence and lack of leadership coming from the White House – it is so bad, even Democrats are complaining.

But more than his bumbling demeanor, his incoherent speech and contradictory positions and pronouncements, I am shocked at the lack of strength and independent thought this President displays. He goes where he is led – from removing sanctions on companies willing to supply Iran with missile parts to attacking parents who argue about the future of their children with school boards that are enamored with the latest social engineering fads, he displays no moral awareness, sense of propriety or conscience. Everything goes if it is the Party line.

The greatest danger to America isn’t an incompetent president, it is a weak one.

Weak presidents cannot staunch the worst instincts of their party and the technocratic Deep State. They have no capability to differentiate between what can be done and what should be done. They could never stop the Deep State from indulging in their greatest desires, most of which align with the technocrats’ ascent to complete and total power over the people and those who are supposed to govern.

Not really surprising they see nothing wrong with surveilling local school board meetings, is it?