Before I break into a rant about the future of America, let me define what I mean by the following.
Norms: A set of informal rules, beliefs, and customs agreed upon within a society.
Institutions: The core pillars of governance that include norms and formal laws that keep our society afloat.
The Establishment: The bureaucracy of D.C. and anyone who stands with them and the status quo or the incremental improvement of the status quo. To the conspiracy theorist, this would be the “deep state.”
Now that that is settled.
The American way of life is unraveling, we are in a full Democratic backslide with a bleak four years ahead of us. Many people including myself have espoused the idea that we must take anti-institutionalist rhetoric and positions to heart, but this also makes me quite uncomfortable; institutions are vital! I want to separate two things, norms versus institutions. I am a complete believer that all norms broken by Republicans should and must be abused by Democrats to punish Republicans, as without doing so would be bringing a knife to a gunfight, something Democrats have been doing for the past few decades. Institutions, on the other hand, the core cogs that run our government, the bureaucracy, our fundamental values, or as conspiracy would call it would as defined by my definition typically include norms, but the institution of norms has been degraded beyond belief, so they must be separated as two different entities when approaching the topic.
Our fundamental norms no longer exist within the context of our institutions, and they have not for quite some time. In any sane society, Democrats should have a supermajority in both chambers of Congress and would not have lost a Presidential election since 1992.
To the extent that I no longer love norms, I agree with the pardon of Hunter Biden and the revelation of potentially more pardons to come. Biden’s pardons will have no bearing on who Trump would pardon, and any person espousing otherwise is full of it. If anyone set a precedent for Hunter’s pardon, it would be Trump himself or the numerous other presidents who had used it in a similar fashion. Take what issue you will with the Presidential Pardon power at large, but let’s not singularly criticize Biden for a pardon that, under the circumstances, is entirely legally justified in my opinion and amidst the nomination of Kash Patel a deranged man who will go after Trump’s political opponents and who has a list of people he has a vendetta against. There is nothing shameful about protecting your allies when the incoming administration has swore to abuse their power to unfairly target them; it is a duty of Biden to give blanket pardons to as many people as possible.
So Democrats have to hold the values of the rest of our fundamental institutions while temporarily discarding norms. We cannot abandon full-heartedly the pillars of our institutions and expect to rebuild our society successfully in the future. However, our messaging can get quite murky, as people are often anti-institutionalists under the guise of anti-establishmentarianism. People do not seek to merely remove what they consider “corrupt actors,” but rather the desire to usurp those actors while destroying the institutions that those actors (the establishment), however corrupt they actually are, respect to a formal degree. It is a miracle of messaging that Trump gets to be the anti-establishment candidate while being bankrolled by the wealthiest people on the planet and numerous other Silicon Valley veterans behind him. Trump is a trojan horse, a time bomb that wants to unravel the rest of our institutions that exist (as norms have already been obliterated by conservatives), and dismantle the bodies of government that silently run the country.
In their view, this is a twisted world where the institutions allow the corrupt actors to exist in the first place; therefore, those pillars must be dismantled to get rid of the corrupt actors, yet is it not paradoxical that those very same pillars have allowed us to elect an anti-institutionalist masquerading as an anti-establishmentarian proof enough that our institutions allow for plenty room to replace accused corrupt actors? It is a curse of our liberal democracy that we must allow safe haven ideas hostile to ours openly while never getting to reap political capital by allowing such ideas to exist. The curse, I should clarify, is not that the ideas are allowed to exist, but the disastrous environment we live in, where we who allow conspiracy theorists and authoritarians to roam free gain the public’s trust rather than us.
These illiberal people seek to use our fundamental truths to undermine our legitimacy and are succeeding. This is the result of the continual degradation of our norms. We have passed the point of no return tenfold. Democrats need to learn the meaning of the word opposition. The time for bipartisanship is over; the time for attack is nigh. There should be no red-brown coalition or blue-dog sympathy towards the Republican Party. When they are not looking, we need to punch them repeatedly and use every political weapon at our disposal. While we may roll around in the dirt with them, our goal is to save the remaining institutions we have left and our government’s functionality at the behest of the laws that define it. With such an institution preserved, only can we successfully rebuild the state part of our country and reintroduce norms back into society on a blank canvas.
Once again, I arrive at the question of how to message. Three weeks ago, I said a fundamental aspect of our liberal and civic nationalist propaganda had to be rooted in truth but embellished. Now, I am conflicted. Lying works, and if it takes lying to win (which is a norm long broken the idea of speaking truthfully), then lie, we must. Lie about being “anti-establishment” and “anti-institutional” the American people will not know the difference. Voter’s trust in lies still results in the liar holding legitimacy; if the lie is done for a noble goal, such as preserving the institutions we have left, then so be it. So long as the institution still functions and maintains a form of legitimacy, we can rebuild with the remaining strength that provides. Suppose the only way to rebuild our norms and maintain our institutions/legitimacy is to abuse a norm long gone. In that case, it is a moral imperative to do so. What good does a moral high ground do if we are pushed off the cliff on which it stands?
So to Democrats, I say, pack every court, gerrymander every seat, and trip every Republican until they feel the disgusting reality of the house they built. Indeed, Democrats did not lay one brick of the construction project destined to be turned into a sky-rise tower in 2025. For if we had placed a brick, there would be no discussion of Democrats losing the moral high ground with the Hunter Biden pardon, a tacit admission that Republicans have been rolling around in shit for the past few decades. Only now do they see a problem with getting dirty, as they seek to use our values against us. There is no political capital to be gained from adhering to norms anymore, and Democrats need to wake up to that reality.
If the above rant was a bit too train-of-thought-esque, here is a brief summary:
Norms as an institution are no longer strong. Adhering to them provides no political capital and often leaves us in a precarious spot.
Messaging can be rooted in lies so long as the end goal is to preserve the strength of our remaining institutions. Even if the lie is as bold as stating that our goal is dismantling our institutions, anything to win to that extent so long as our goal never becomes the true destruction of our remaining institutions. Voters will not be able to tell whether or not you have actually dismantled said institution, as I doubt most voters even know what our institutions are.
By preserving the remaining institutions and building a winning coalition through being an actual opposition party with a revamped messaging ecosystem, we can rebuild our prior norms and strengthen the institutions we keep alive.
-Lex