In the years leading up to the 2024 presidential election, the Democrats and establishment Republicans
who wanted to see Joe Biden and later Kamala Harris remain in office, went all in on one
overarching narrative above all, that Donald Trump represented an existential threat to
American democracy. Biden's team and their allies in politics and media
repeated this claim day after day, essentially trying to convince millions of Americans
that elections would literally stop happening in this country if Trump won.
Taking a step back, Trump was framed as the domestic enemy in a broader international fight
that saw autocratic leaders like Russian President Vladimir Putin, former Brazilian
President Jair Bolsonaro, former Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, and others
facing down a coalition of democratic governments. Democracy versus autocracy was meant to be the
defining dynamic of the day, meaning everything from the war in Ukraine to the fight over
climate change was framed as one big battle where the good guys were defined purely by their
commitment to the democratic process. And in that global fight, no effort was more important,
we were told, than keeping Trump out of the White House. But then, he won.
Despite the establishment's efforts, a majority of American voters were not swayed by the
democracy versus autocracy narrative. Or, at least, they demonstrated that they preferred a
candidate who promised to close the border, wind down the war in Ukraine, cut down the
extremely bloated federal bureaucracy, investigate the weaponization of the DOJ in recent years,
and roll back federal climate policies while celebrating and vowing to continue the appointment
of conservative judges and justices, among other campaign promises.
Now, President Biden and really all the people around him who are actually running things
are in their so-called lame duck period. And what are they doing as they wait to
hand power over to the next administration? They're doing whatever they can to make it
harder for Trump's team to implement the very policies voters just sent them to the White House
to carry out. Last week, we learned that the Biden administration is moving unassembled border
wall material away from the southern border and selling it at an auction. Groups allied with
the president are also calling on him to close ICE detention facilities before leaving office,
to hamper Trump's plans to deport illegal immigrants. After losing the election last
month, the Biden administration escalated the war in Ukraine by helping Ukrainian forces
shoot long-range American missiles further into Russia. Now, the president's team is rushing
to send another $725 million to Ukraine before Trump is sworn in on January 20th.
Earlier this year, the Office of Personnel Management issued a ruling that makes it
much harder for Trump's team to overhaul the federal workforce. While Trump could still
carry out this campaign promise, he now cannot do so through an executive order. He is required
to propose a new rule, which will likely bring years of legal battles. Biden pardoned
his son Hunter after he was facing prison sentences for federal felony gun and tax convictions.
Now, the president is reportedly considering preemptive pardons for numerous allies that his
team expects to be investigated by Trump's DOJ. Members of the president's cabinet are rushing
to spend as much money as possible in the various departments they oversee. EPA officials
are hurrying to implement as many new environmental and climate policies as they can, and the
and Senate Democrats are racing to fill as many federal judicial positions as they're able to
before losing the White House and Senate. Depending on where you stand on Trump's agenda, you could
see these efforts as heroic or disgraceful. But because the president and political establishment
are ramming through policies that a majority of Americans just voted against,
it's impossible to seriously label these actions as anything other than explicitly
undemocratic. As someone who does not believe democracy is the most ethical system
or the best way to organize society, this alone does not bother me.
But the hypocrisy is still important to call out, because with their actions,
the political class has again revealed that they do not actually care about democracy.
They only use the fact that much of the public does care about democracy to try and serve their
own ends. The same goes for human rights abuses and crackdowns on dissent carried out by
foreign governments that Washington wants to overthrow. When true, these are totally
legitimate criticisms to level out these state leaders. But our government officials have demonstrated
a complete willingness to ignore, support, and even partake in the same abuses when it's useful to
them. So again, they are only using the fact that decent people care about these issues
to serve their own agenda. It is important to have principles, but it's also important to
recognize when people who do not share your principles are using your commitment to those
principles to manipulate you. The political establishment in recent weeks has shown,
yet again, that they do this. It's time we stop falling for it.