How to Buy an Election
The state—or, to make the matter more concrete, the government—consists of a gang of men exactly like you and me. They have, taking one with another, no special talent for the business of government; they have only a talent for getting and holding office. Their principal device to that end is to search out groups who pant and pine for something they can’t get, and to promise to give it to them. Nine times out of ten that promise is worth nothing. The tenth time it is made good by looting A to satisfy B. In other words, government is a broker in pillage, and every election is a sort of advance auction sale of stolen goods.
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H.L. Mencken, From the essay “Sham Battle” in Carnival of Buncombe, 1936
In the Soviet Union of Lenin and Stalin, a program of dekulakization destroyed an entire class of peasant farmers, called kulaks. These were the smallholders who were a bit more prosperous than the poorest of the poor who surrounded them. In some cases, they owned – gasp! – more than eight acres of land. Often, however, they simply had an extra pig or some other farm animals to feed their families. This was enough to transform them into objects of hatred for envious and malicious neighbors. During various phases of this “class-enemy” persecution, the Soviet government confiscated more than 100 million acres of land, deported nearly 2 million farmers to prisons and work-camps (often located in Siberia), and executed between 500,000 and 5 million people, depending upon whom you ask. Today, this political process, called classicide, appears to be providing inspiration for progressives and the Democratic Party faithful in the United States. So maybe the Democrats were right: We’re all Russians, now!
Playing to Delicate Voter Sensibilities
Is it possible that Democrats are attempting to destroy the most productive class of American voters, mollify them with payoffs and generous unemployment benefits, and create an economic calamity that can be used to win the November election? Politicians have been rigging elections for decades – often with visceral cruelty, as Robert Caro demonstrated in volume two of his biography of President Lyndon Johnson, Means of Ascent. But as dawn broke on the year 2020, the Democrats were facing a daunting challenge. The many iterations of their Russian conspiracies had fallen apart as quickly as vintage #MeToo rape allegations, and the mirage of impeachment had left them thirsty in an electoral desert that seemed to have no end. Just as bad, their presidential candidate, Joe Biden, was drowning in a bottomless soup-bowl of Ukrainian corruption – and it wasn’t borscht. So it went – until the middle of February 2020. Despite massive debt and the highly leveraged nature of an economy goosed by the Federal Reserve monetary easing and fiscal mismanagement in Congress, employment was at record highs, and minorities were deserting the Democratic Party’s plantation and becoming closet deplorables.
So what’s a mother to do? How do you snatch from the jaws of defeat a Democratic election-night victory that was swirling irretrievably around November 3rd like a quart of Nancy Pelosi’s ice cream around a hot black hole at the center of a red-state galaxy with an orange-man-nougat at its center? You could almost hear Rachel Maddow screaming. And Jordan Peterson had already spread the word about Soviet gulags. As a result, easily triggered college students were no longer as excited as they were in 2016 to see balaclava-wearing Antifa thugs kicking lone women in the head. No. Today’s Democrats needed a family-friendly way to eliminate class enemies. So how do you break some legs without that nasty crunching sound?
Bat Wings to the Rescue
Even Democrats know that job creation is dependent upon small businesses more than any other sector of the economy. And since the long-term goal of progressives is to increase the number of voters who are dependent on government income – the Yellow Brick Road toward socialism – anything that undermines widespread prosperity will do. So the appearance of the coronavirus was like pennies from heaven, but with no musical score, no Bing Crosby or Steve Martin, and no upside spiritual connection to “found money” left by angelic beings – that is, not unless you count fluttering Chinese batwings from Wuhan. Yes. The coronavirus was the crisis that wouldn’t be wasted, and today’s helicopter parents are the perfect target for a campaign based on fear. Groomed by decades of bumper-sticker philosophy, unionized public-school teachers, and textbooks created by political hacks, they were ready to quake in their booties at the drop of a wonton. And Democrats are experts at manipulating fear – with only Thomas Massie and Rand Paul among the very few Republicans fighting the giveaways and lockdown with any conviction. And in response, Democrats wield guilt like a sledgehammer. To anyone who identifies the devastating consequences of the lockdown, the retort is unanimous and shrill: You want to kill grandma! The concept of nuance died quietly at the close of the last millennium; requiescat in pace.
It doesn’t matter that the cure is worse than the disease. It doesn’t matter that fear of COVID-19 has left more than 30 million workers unemployed, hospitals and thousands of businesses shuttered, food-production supply chains in tatters, and tens of millions of the world’s most destitute people looking toward a bleak future of malnutrition and mass death. No. The Democrats must win in November. This election cycle is all that matters. And that means putting everyone on a government-run financial life-support machine that’s every bit as deadly as a hospital respirator wielded by Big Nurse on a bad day. By destroying the small-business kulaks of America, Democrats will destroy the most unpredictable, productive, and innovative source of economic abundance now operating. And too many Americans are buying what they’re selling – for now.
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