Is it “The Greatest Constitutional Crisis Since the Civil War”?
Conrad Black has an article in American Greatness with the title “The Greatest Constitutional Crisis Since the Civil War.” Here’s an excerpt:
The most immense and dangerous public scandal in American history is finally cracking open like a ripe pomegranate. The broad swath of the Trump-hating media that has participated in what has amounted to an unconstitutional attempt to overthrow the government are reduced to reporting the events and revelations of the scandal in which they have been complicit, in a po-faced ho-hum manner to impart to the misinformed public that this is as routine as stock market fluctuations or the burning of an American flag in Tehran.
For more than two years, the United States and the world have had two competing narratives: that an elected president of the United States was a Russian agent whom the Kremlin helped elect; and its rival narrative that senior officials of the Justice Department, FBI, CIA, and other national intelligence organizations had repeatedly lied under oath, misinformed federal officials, and meddled in partisan political matters illegally and unconstitutionally and had effectively tried to influence the outcome of a presidential election, and then undo its result by falsely propagating the first narrative. It is now obvious and indisputable that the second narrative is the correct one.
The authors, accomplices, and dupes of this attempted overthrow of constitutional government are now well along in reciting their misconduct without embarrassment or remorse because—in fired FBI Director James Comey’s formulation—a “higher duty” than the oath they swore to uphold the Constitution compelled them. Or—in fired FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe’s words—“the threat” was too great. Nevermind that the nature of “the threat” was that the people might elect someone he and Comey disapproved of as president, and that that person might actually serve his term, as elected.
The article goes on to describe some of the details of what happened, and the players involved. It’s worth reading the whole thing for a refresher course in what you probably already know.
But despite the fact that I agree that this is a constitutional scandal of extremely major proportions, I disagree with Black’s conclusions when he writes:
The collapse of this grotesque putsch, under the irresistible pressure of a functioning attorney general and Senate committees that are not hamstrung by NeverTrumpers, will cause a revulsion against the Democratic Party that will be seismic and prolonged.
I think he very gravely underestimates the power of belief, propaganda, and confirmation bias. I think the number of people who will have minds changed by this is very small. I could be wrong, but that’s what I see so far.
The media pushed its own narrative for two years, and I believe that has had a tremendous effect. The left, of course, was ready to believe it, and for the hard left truth doesn’t matter, only the ends that justify the means. For the people who are more in the middle, the relentless daily drip drip drip has its effect. Minds and opinions become hardened in a certain belief system, and not too many people are willing to change those opinions even in the face of strong evidence that the opinions are wrong, even very wrong.
The MSM knows this. They know their power. And their power exists even though a lot of people don’t trust them these days. It’s paradoxical, but the hammering home of a story—even from somewhat suspect sources—has the effect of habituating people to that story and making it seem more plausible. The sheer weight and number of the stories, even if each one is suspect and/or is later shown to have been shaky or even incorrect, still has a cumulative effect for many people.
This story has been complex, with many twistings and turnings and details. It takes extraordinary interest and patience and attention to read the whole thing, put the pieces together, and sort it out for oneself objectively. Realistically speaking, what percentage of people is going to do that? I believe that most people will just accept the narrative presented by the media outlets of their choice.
Black is a great historian whose biographies of Roosevelt and Nixon are excellent. He is also very suspicious of the US legal system, of s which he has been a victim. That suspicion may feed his concern about the Deep State and its machinations.
Nebraska state Sen. Ernie Chambers on Tuesday compared the American flag with the Nazi swastika on the floor of the legislature. “I don’t come here for this rag every day, and it’s a rag. That’s all it is to me,” said Chambers about respecting the flag. “When you show a way to persuade Jews to sanctify and worship the swastika, when you show me that I’ll come up here and stand while you all hypocritically pretend that rag is something that it definitely is not.“
Sadly, neo, I think you are correct. We are unlikely to see the accounting for the deep state’s attempted coup d’etat that the severity of the behavior deserves. And, truth to tell, it’s not entirely clear that the coup will ultimately fail. It’s stalled as the collusion narrative has collapsed, but the overwhelming media, Democrat and establishment Republican (McCain’s ghost, I’m looking at you!), and bureaucratic solidarity against the elected President continues … don’t count them out until either Trump is reelected with a strongly Republican congress or several thousand are fired, with hundreds going to jail and a few ending up with the death penalty for high treason.
I entirely agree that few minds will change. So we have a fundamentally divided electorate. Not so much in what the majority of each side values but in each side’s view of the other side and of where each side’s triumph would/will lead.
Tragically, the left’s liberal enablers have swallowed the left’s kool-aid and believe the left’s lying characterization of America’s history and inherent nature. Immersed in the willful blindness that indoctrination brings, they sincerely believe that those on the right are mysogynist, racist, worship ‘mammon’ and are supporters of evil.
Whereas, we on the right see clearly where the path the left advocates leads, to 1984 with its; “a boot, stomping on a human face… forever”.
Imagine a world where Venezuela is the norm and where no “land of liberty” exists and you have the socialist ‘paradise’ the left intends to “fundamentally transform” us into…
It is reasonable to pray for but unreasonable to expect, that liberals will somehow awaken to the lies that they have and are being fed, as history and human nature demonstrate otherwise.
So, if we accept the premise that, “A House Divided Cannot Stand” and, if we accept that we have an irreconcilably divided electorate… do we prepare for “politics by ‘other’ means” or do we decide effectively to “go quietly into the night”…?
Knowing that a decision to surrender is an admission that, we don’t deserve our liberties because we refuse to fight for them…
But to clarify; preparation is potential not kinetic. It the necessary precondition to kinetic action when no other recourse exists. We are not yet at that trigger point but it is to that moment that I suspect Pat Caddell fearfully envisioned.
Hell, there was no way Obama could have happened as people who wanted to know who he really was started reading the various narratives about him, but he did. The undermine of the Republic of these United States was well on the way by the end of the 1960’s and it had been bent and twisted for about a century before that. I am hoping that enough information will come out in a manner that is accessible to open minded people on the left and the right and they will appreciate how close we came to Trump being driven out of office. Say what you will about Trump but he has had the stamina and drive to stay the course and play his hand out. I do consider Trump’s election a true God Send, a strange one but he and we won that round.
Neo,
I’m sorry to say that you are spot-on correct about this.
I live in a red state, working in the tech-sector in a not-blue-but-pretty-purple large city. I have close familiarity with three churches (Baptist, Methodist, and Catholic) in the area. I’d characterize their memberships’ attitudes as red, purple, and Catholic, respectively.
(“Catholic” is closer to purple than anything else, but with its own eccentricities. As with American Judaism, the more morally/theologically-conservative the parish/synagogue is, the more “red” it tends to behave. But you get spots of purple and blue, not all of which make any sense, even from within the perspective of the religion’s doctrinal content.)
Looking at persons in my sphere (as described above), I can affirm without fear of contradiction: About 5% of them are curious enough to take the effort to understand what really happened. (But of those, most are already conservative and political-news-junkies. They already know; and it hasn’t changed any of their existing political opinions.)
Of the remaining 95%, most form their political opinions through some form of emotionalism.
Many are left-of-center and will never, ever be persuaded that Trump could escape prosecution/impeachment by anything other than some kind of obstruction of justice. And most of those think it’s silly, irrational “denialism” for anyone, at this time-of-day, to doubt the notion that Trump was Putin’s hand-picked preferred candidate and benefitted from Russian interference.
But of course, in this red state, a lot of the 95% actually voted for Trump. But that doesn’t mean they’ve heard anything about this story. Their take on all this can be summed up as follows: “Yeah, I heard that some FBI people keep getting interviewed…or is it that they testified before Congress? Oh, and last year some guy got fired. What the hell, I’m just disappointed my fantasy football team did so badly.”
If you try to convince THAT crowd that, in essence, the FBI attempted a coup over the last three years, they’ll shrug and say, “Well…I wouldn’t go that far. And anyway, it’ll sort itself out in the end, won’t it? I mean, Trump won in spite of all that, so why does it matter?”
So, yes: Andrew McCabe et alia ought to spend the rest of their lives in a Federal penitentiary. Their effort to ensure a major party candidate couldn’t be elected, to ensure the election of the other party’s candidate, and to engineer the removal-from-office of the winner because they disapproved of him and were afraid he’d discover everything they corruptly did for the benefit of his opponent, constitutes a terrifying attack on the Constitution. It made a hot civil war vastly more probable than it otherwise would have been. (After all, if elections no longer can be trusted to “count,” what’s the alternative?)
But it won’t happen. They’ll go into retirement, pensions and book-sales-revenue intact. Because most Americans don’t have a clue it happened, and couldn’t be bothered to learn about it even if you told them.
I agree that few will change their minds given the role of the msm propaganda machine. Additionally, celebrity worship is another factor as most celebrities lean to the left. In truth, a vast majority (mostly prevalent on the left, but also found on the right) are susceptible to emotional appeals. History is the school where awareness of human nature is learned, and history is not a well attended school. Human nature sees to that.
I, too, believe that this is the “gravest Constitutional crisis since the Civil War.”
But I also believe that, thanks to the pretty much total success of Antonio Gramsci’s “long march through the institutions/culture,” and the Left’s control over–among other power centers, our Educational Establishment, the MSM, the Arts and the Entertainment industry–a decreasing number of citizens, these days, have the knowledge of the cautionary examples from Greek and, especially, from Roman history and, moreover, enough un-skewed/un-transformed/un-revised, accurate knowledge of American history, and the ideas, the political philosophy that animated our Founders, sufficient to recognize just how unprecedented and perilous the situation of our Republic actually is.
You might note, as well, that thanks to the success of that Long March, “Patriotism” has become an increasingly suspect and discredited concept–supposedly a code word concealing evil, bigotry, repression, war, and rapacity–and portrayed as the province of brain dead, buck-toothed, uneducated morons, and bigots.
Of course, it helps not one bit that the MSM will not characterize this attempted–and still potentially successful coup d’etat –as what it is; they would much rather us frogs not realize that–little by little–the temperature in the pot keeps rising, and that soon us frogs will be boiled.
So, no, I don’t think that this coup attempt is dead by any means, and I also think that unless it’s leaders are identified, indicted, prosecuted, and punished–and punished very harshly–this merely sets the pattern, it is just the first of many such coups that will be mounted here in the future by overly ambitious men and women.
Because, why not, if there is no penalty for trying?
The other major blindness that so many people seem to be afflicted with, is that they just assume that the coup plotters will color between the lines established by the Founders and our Constitution, that –while they may do something irregular, unethical, or even illegal here or there–they will still stay within the accepted boundaries.
Why?
Why should someone, intent on overthrowing the state, play by the state’s rules, that are intended to preserve that state?
Not work in ways that are outside normal, accepted, and expected boundaries, that increase their chances of success?
Such people, it seems to me–no mater what they might say for public consumption–would have no respect at all for the boundaries.
Artfldgr on February 22, 2019 at 4:15 pm at 4:15 pm said:
Nebraska state Sen. Ernie Chambers on Tuesday compared the American flag with the Nazi swastika on the floor of the legislature. “I don’t come here for this rag every day, and it’s a rag. That’s all it is to me,” said Chambers about respecting the flag. “When you show a way to persuade Jews to sanctify and worship the swastika, when you show me that I’ll come up here and stand while you all hypocritically pretend that rag is something that it definitely is not.“
* * *
A symbol is only what you yourself put into it.
I understand the Kaepernickian analogy that Mr. Chambers is reaching for, but I doubt if he has any real recognition of the difference between the United States (past and present) and Nazi Germany, because the teaching of history and the massaging of the public memory has been deliberately subverted for decades.
I also had wondered why it was so crucial for the National People’s Radio to publish this particular piece of non-essential historical trivia just now, although it is an “anniversary” of sorts. Once it was well and truly understood that the Nazis were the Bad Guys, this support either evaporated or went waaaaayyyy underground.
https://www.npr.org/sections/codeswitch/2019/02/20/695941323/when-nazis-took-manhattan
I doubt if more than a few dozen at most of those 20,000 had any idea of what Hitler’s National Socialist party supported, what he had written previously, and what he would do subsequently.
Somewhat like the thousands of Communist Party of USA members before the fall of the USSR (and the remainder are still willfully blind to the homicides of that regime).
Or the hordes on the hustings for the Socialist Party of America, aka the Democrats.
R. C.’s count of knowledgeable vs LIVs is maybe a little pessimistic, but there really aren’t a lot of us political news junkies who actually look at both sides and at least try to analyze the spin & weigh the alternative facts.
It’s not a crisis, just another manifestation of a condition. The horrid behavior of the Democratic Party and associated actors costs them nothing with their voters. As for ‘swing voters’, see the description of them once offered by James Neuchterlein: “the sort of person who votes against someone for a reason like ‘she reminds me of my first wife’.”
Anyone aware of only the mainstream media narrative will be surprised by this story. It’s sad, but that is the low low state of our media. They should at least have told us about the existence of this alternative reality/parallel universe. No doubt they’ll put intense reverse spin on any of it they might eventually be grudgingly forced to cover.
@parker – ditto
See also http://copymatter.com/embracing-brevity/
What a depressing post. The Overton window has shifted thanks to the “resistance.” Today’s Dems make Nixon look like a piker.
Perhaps the next time you talk to someone who really believes the Russians wanted Trump to win , ask them why the Russians wanted someone to win who wanted America First and to control immigration rates in to the United States and who wanted the other NATO nations to spend more on their militaries? And why the Russians wanted an American president who wanted to sell American Energy to Europe? Recently I asked an open borders Hispanic where will Mexicans go for a better life if they turn the U.S. into another Mexico. He looked shocked! He had no answer. As if he had never considered it. Maybe we should argue with questions as much as with answers. ….I know…the left is not logical anymore, but maybe some will think…
“The Greatest Constitutional Crisis Since the Civil War”?
I don’t know what’s wrong with me. I get that it’s serious and I am angry about it, but is it really the greatest whatever crisis since whenever?
Maybe I’m jaded after eight years of Obama. Maybe it seems like standard operating procedure these days after Nixon/Watergate, and Reagan/Contragate, Clinton/MonicaGate. Some people were pretty serious about impeaching Bush 43 and Obama.
For those who bought the JFK conspiracy — and I did for years — the notion that elements of the CIA, the military, the oil barons and the mob organized a presidential assassination was the greatest crisis.
I’m crisised out.
Well, huxley, when was the last time the fbi (and other agencies of the beltway) OVERTLY set about to reverse the outcome of the electoral college? You know, that pesky part of the Constitution set in place by the Founders to trip up mob rule by the airheads. Are you really that dense, repectfully?
Goodnight, you may judge me a a moran or or an idiot,, but I am sleepy, howver I have i-enjoeyed content and comments it is silent and cold in the center of the continent.
It’s not that. He’s been proclaiming “the collapse of this grotesque putsch” for some time now.
On December 11th, he reported; “Mueller’s Collusion Hoax Collapses.” So now its collapsed again?
Or maybe its been rubble for some time now, and he’s just reporting that The Left, as you like to say here, has only now realized it.
Well no! They realized this back in December:
I could go back to the Summer of 2018, when Conrad was declaring that “Trump Has Already Won on Impeachment” but you get the point.
You know, that pesky part of the Constitution set in place by the Founders to trip up mob rule by the airheads. Are you really that dense, repectfully?
Actually, it was a compromise between several proposed models of how to elect the President, and it worked as expected precisely twice. It doesn’t function to ‘trip up mob rule’. It is a set of conventions with one utility: you don’t have to have a national apparatus of elections administration with a uniform set of voter qualifications in order to conduct the presidential contest.
Manju, doesn’t matter what Black wrote when. The Russian collusion investigation is humbug and fairly blatant humbug. Partisan Democrats are emotionally incapable of acknowledging that.
“It doesn’t function to ‘trip up mob rule’.” Art Deco
The electoral college was instituted to ensure that the larger state’s greater pop. could not easily dominate the rural states. So, it most definitely was set up to stop ‘mob rule’.
“Democracy is two wolves and a lamb voting on what to have for lunch. Liberty is a well-armed lamb contesting the vote.
When the people find that they can vote themselves money, that will herald the end of the republic. They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither safety nor liberty.” Benjamin Franklin
Black is right about the crisis, but Neo is more correct that the reaction will be muted. Even if most of the guilty are fired (a 20% punishment, or less — but still more than 0), and even if a many are actually indicted, it’s not going to be a big deal because the Dem media won’t report it like a big deal.
Reps need to end tax exemptions to colleges that have been discriminating against hiring Republican professors. Discrimination for decades has led to the acceptance of demonization, today.
And once a college indoctrinated person feels morally superior to the demonized Republicans, then gets a higher-than-average paying job in some corporation, the demonizing grads are competing to be on the management boot-licking express.
The elites, including elite Reps, have been indoctrinated to demonize Reps. The Dems are even ostracized if they DON’T demonize Reps.
If Trump’s a demon, and for many Dems he will always be a demon, the FBI didn’t violate enough laws to impeach him — that will enrage such Dems more than the fact that the FBI deep state was doing illegal actions.
The electoral college was instituted to ensure that the larger state’s greater pop. could not easily dominate the rural states. So, it most definitely was set up to stop ‘mob rule’.
No, it was instituted to split the difference between competing plans. People have this idea that ‘the Constitution’ was inspired by some masterpiece of political sociology. It was pols getting a job done.
http://teachingamericanhistory.org/static/convention/themes/8.html
Are you really that dense, repectfully?
parker: Opinions vary.
Art Deco,
This resolution of the difficult matter of Presidential election clearly meant that the partly national -partly federal model had become the deliberate sense of the convention. This structural compromise—Congress is partly federal and partly national
So, it was to balance big states and small states. QED.
And once a college indoctrinated person feels morally superior to the demonized Republicans,
The Tucker Carlson book is very good at this. College educated people were once Republican voters. For several reasons, the topic of his book, they switched to Democrats. Some is globalization, in which they are detached from the fate of local economies. Some is open borders and illegal immigration in which illegals become child care workers and country club grounds keepers.
Some is abortion, which is popular with college educated women.
Trump is moving the GOP back to a middle class party. It may not work and we are doomed. China has cost us an awful lot. I was thinking today about the second world war. Could we manufacture 200,000 airplanes ? We have disarmed our selves. The “Knowledge Economy” is fragile.
“The Russian collusion investigation is humbug,,,.”
Well, yes, but that isn’t the point (even if it ought to be).
The point is that the “Investigation” has been extraordinarily effective in achieving the aims of the Democratic Party. At least so far.
Since one of the “Investigation’s” purposes—perhaps even its main purpose—was—is—to prevent Hillary Clinton and those other flagrant [fill in plural expletive] in the administration of POTUS44 from being “found out” and prosecuted, then the collusion fantasy, fabricated, spun and reported ad infinitum as verified fact, has actually been incredibly successful.
The MSM has been shooting flak at the truth for so long now and in such enormous quantities that the truth of the extraordinary malfeasance of that administration—and its enormous extent and the number of administration officials involved in it ALL THE WAY TO THE TOP— will likely not see the light of day (at least not in the MSM); and even if it does it will not, as mentioned ATL and BTL, be believed by a great many American citizens.
So that not only is this the most egregious political scandal in US history; it is the most egregious (if successful thus far) cover-up as well. To be sure, it is not a single cover-up but a cover-up that operates on several different levels; several different dimensions. IOW, a cover-up of a cover-up of a cover-up, etc.
With the MSM acting as de facto (and perhaps even de jure) co-conspirator in all of its aspects.
If that’s not success, then what is?
At least so far.
A major question is, when—and how—it all can (and will) begin to unravel.
Note however that should the latter actually happen, the Republic will face another severe test. Another extraordinary threat to its existence.
(With the Democrats likely to say, if the plot DOES ultimateley unravel and push DOES comes to shove: “You Republican’s can’t prosecute us because if you do, if you dare to do this, you will be putting the USA in immense and indescribable danger. (And you call yourselves patriots, heh….) Do you really want to do that?”)
The point is that the “Investigation” has been extraordinarily effective in achieving the aims of the Democratic Party. At least so far.
What? Nothing the Democratic Party does impedes the Republicans more than the continual exercise in failure theatre on the part of the Republican congressional caucus. Why don’t we have the Wall? Start with Paul Ryan and AM McConnell if you want the guilty parties. The butt-hurt Jeff Flake was another impediment to accomplishing much of anything.
Kind of late to this party, AMerica.