Elites are building a system to control and constrain Americans’ self-expression and political freedom.
What T. S. Eliot said of humankind, that it “cannot bear very much reality,” must be doubly true for Americans. It’s a feature of being a providential nation, protected by two oceans and mostly spared the harsher existence that habituates other societies to corruption and tyranny, while left free to cultivate its uniquely optimistic political culture. The drawback of this good fortune is that, at decisive moments, a hopeful people can be blind to self-inflicted disasters. The reality facing America now is that of widespread, coordinated efforts to control our politics, carried out by a self-interested elite grown openly disdainful of the nation’s traditions.
If not for a last-minute postponement, a Manhattan judge would have sentenced Donald Trump for the former president’s conviction last May by the time this article appeared, in what could fairly be characterized by an objective observer as a politically motivated trial, intended to hamper his 2024 presidential campaign. The charges pushed the “outer boundaries of the law and due process,” according to a former federal and state prosecutor, now working as an analyst for CNN—not exactly a bastion of conservative bias. The judge in the trial, Juan Merchan, previously violated New York State ethics rules by donating to Joe Biden’s 2020 campaign and to a group called Stop Republicans. The judge’s daughter, Loren Merchan, a professional political operative, has done campaign work for both Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris, the Democratic presidential nominee. After repeatedly refusing to recuse himself over such conflicts of interest, Merchan barred Trump’s lawyers from arguing that the trial might be politically motivated. He had originally scheduled the sentencing for September 18, roughly six weeks before the election. (In late August, Trump was also reindicted on election-subversion charges by special counsel Jack Smith, in what Politico described as “an attempt to recalibrate the case after the Supreme Court’s immunity decision” in July.)
