Will the Regime Strike Back?

The Blaze was kind enough to publish a long-form piece of mine about the election and the recent history of political and media manipulation, deception, and hypocrisy. You can read the piece here. It's paywalled, and I want to be respectful of that, but here are a few key excerpts that give you the main arguments.

The piece begins by defining what I mean by "the Regime" and establishing the pattern of institutional resistance to Trump:

I refer to these individuals and organizations using a shorthand of “the Regime.” I define this term to mean the combination of the entrenched federal bureaucratic power structure, its legacy media allies, institutions with significant Regime-friendly control (most nonprofits and foundations, college DEI apparatus, many entertainers with prominent platforms and Regime-aligned interests, etc.), and the leadership of the DNC.

Naturally, there’s some overlap among these groups. But the Regime has elements of what Mike Benz calls “the Blob” and what Trump and others call “the Deep State.”

After chronicling the evolution of anti-Trump efforts from 2015 to the present, I explain why Trump, specifically, poses such a threat to institutional power:

The Regime can tolerate a Republican president, perhaps only begrudgingly if the Republican isn’t a neocon. But what it can’t tolerate is a loud-mouthed, brash, somewhat chaotic disruptive force.

That is Trump. As I said, Trump isn’t part of the plan. And the Regime and its media allies will never stop lying and deceiving in order to exaggerate Trump’s flaws (which absolutely do exist!) or even to create new ones from whole cloth.

But that isn’t even what bothers me the most. No, what bothers me as an American is that they will do all of this at the same time as they preach to us. They will anoint a nominee who has received no primary votes, or they will try to pressure electors into changing their allegiance, all while preening about being the ones who are on the side of “democracy.” They will call for adding several new Supreme Court justices and abolishing the filibuster just as they claim to be for maintaining “norms.” They will say that Trump is a threat to freedom while calling for new and stronger limits on “misinformation.”

The piece concludes with a warning about what we're likely to see if (when) Trump wins today:

I feel confident that many of the same voices that have spent years lecturing us about “election denialism” and “threats to democracy” will quickly pivot to denying Trump’s victory or using undemocratic means to subvert or overturn the election in the event that Trump wins.

They will rationalize and justify their hypocrisy. For evidence of this, we need look no farther than the 2016 “Hamilton elector” scheme, the attempt to disqualify Trump from the ballot, and a variety of legal actions designed to imprison or bankrupt Trump.

The same media outlets that amplified baseless claims and myriad distortions will now tout new theories and platform “experts” who will explain why Trump isn’t even eligible to be president. The same institutions that coordinated to suppress stories unfavorable to their preferred candidate will do it again, to the extent that they still can in a post-X world. And the same politicians who routinely compare Trump to Hitler while preaching about “dangerous rhetoric” will once again make a not-so-subtle plea to the most unstable elements of our society that "Trump must be eliminated."

When the Regime warns about threats to democracy, it is really warning about threats to its power. The Regime's commitment to democratic principles — free speech in particular — extends precisely as far as those principles serve its interests. And if Trump wins, we will see just how quickly the Regime's supposed devotion to accepting election results evaporates. The only question is whether enough Americans will finally recognize this breathtaking hypocrisy for what it is.

There’s much, much more to the piece—especially regarding the detailed summary of the past eight years of anti-speech efforts, deception, gaslighting, and so on. The full commentary explains why and how these patterns may intensify after today's election.

I hope you'll consider reading it.