The Age of Boutique Authoritarianism

Galileo’s head was on the block / his crime was looking up the truth - Indigo Girls

Lois Lerner refused to testify before lawmakers for her role in the targeted persecution of TEA Party organizations via her position as IRS Director of tax exempt non-profits, and was voted in contempt of Congress.

Eric Holder refused a Congressional subpoena for documents related to the “Fast and Furious” operation that ran guns to Mexican cartel members, ostensibly to track the weapons, one of which was later used to kill US Border Agent Brian Terry.

Neither received any jail time.

FBI lawyer Kevin Clinesmith intentionally and materially altered an email included in an FBI application to renew a FISA warrant against Carter Page. He was found guilty, but spent no time in prison, receiving probation and community service hours. He has since had his law license reinstated.

James Comey, Peter Strzok, Lisa Page, John Brennan, James Clapper, and the entire Mueller Report team, among others, repeatedly perjured themselves in Congressional testimony. Brennan and Clapper now have contributor gigs at cable news channels; Strzok has filed a wrongful termination suit against the FBI. Mueller’s Report was chastised by the IG’s office for its misleading assertions and its lies by omission, with no apologies amongst the fallout.

And no jail time for any of them.

Today, former Trump advisor Steve Bannon was given a 4-month jail sentence for Contempt of Congress. Bannon initially denied the legitimacy of the Congressional subpoena, citing executive privilege in his role as presidential advisor, but ultimately did testify.

I no longer care what any of you think about Donald Trump. Nor do I care what you think of Bannon, who — full disclosure — invited me to New York for a preview of his Sarah Palin documentary over a decade ago. Neither man is the issue. Roger Stone isn’t the issue, either — whatever you think of him either as a person or a persona. The My Pillow guy? Not the issue.

Instead, the issue is that it is beyond obvious we have a completely politicized system of Justice in which equality before the law is irrelevant, and political prosecutions are becoming the norm under this Administration’s DOJ. AG Merrick Garland recommended a two year sentence for the two NY lawyers who fire bombed a police car — with law enforcement occupants inside — during a BLM protest; meanwhile, the same AG has acquired a 3 1/2 year jail sentence against a 24-year-old UCLA grad for briefly sitting in Mike Pence’s chair on Jan 6. The protestor had committed no violence and destroyed no property.

The disparity in both charging and sentencing is undeniable: Jan 6 defendants charged with parading do prison time. Antifa members who set fire to police barracks or federal courthouses were released en masse, often with financial assistance promoted by the now Vice President, and no charges ultimately brought.

If you are among those who feel this kind of “Justice” is appropriate because the “good people” are acting on principle, while the “bad people” are acting because they’re racist fascist homophobic xenophobes who want to kill trans people and burn books, I truly pity you.

Because such systems of Justice aren’t Justice systems at all: they are but Potemkin facades that keep plausible the idea that we are a free country whose citizens are equal under the law. They are the masks worn by authoritarians and actual fascists, who — as we’ve seen here recently — are happy to strong-arm, if necessary, like-minded big tech platforms, news organizations, and many corporate boards, into colluding with government to prevent the spread of “misinformation” or “disinformation,” all of which, like “hate speech,” is defined by them for them.

Not only is this the effective end to our first significant natural right, the right to free speech; but it’s the absolute harbinger of an end to a genuine democratic republic and its constitutional premises.

“Galileo’s head was on the block / “His crime was looking for the truth”

— and then he was imprisoned for upsetting the scientific consensus as determined by the Church.

Oh. And he was also scientifically correct, much to the chagrin of dogged geocentrists.

The lesson there is obvious: When consensus is the mark of doubleplus good think, while questioning consensus is the mark of heresy then tied to domestic terrorism, you are living in an authoritarian state, albeit one characterized by its claim to virtue and elite status. It’s what I’ve come to think of as “boutique authoritarianism”: No need for mustaches and epaulets. A Ukraine flag emoji and a “hate has no home here” bumpersticker work just as well and have the advantage of not appearing militaristic and, you know, third worldly.

Government-permitted speech — sold as “content moderation” and justified as a way to prevent “dangerous misinformation” — is not free speech at all: It is propaganda, and its adoption is then incentivized by the policing and canceling of heretics by apparatchiks of what is now a corporatist fascism — a collusion between leftist political activism, the federal government, and big corporations like, eg., Pfizer, or Amazon, the latter of which is now pulling books from sale in conjunction with our government under the pretense of “sanctions.”

Free speech is conceived of as a protection for unpopular speech, speech the government doesn’t like, and speech that runs afoul of both social and political consensus.

Replacing that with policed speech — for our own good, we’re told — presumes a hierarchy of Truth that is determined more by power than by things as they really are.

This has long been the predictable end to both the diversity agenda and the linguistic turn, wherein individual intent — autonomy — is to be replaced by the intent of some collective, with heterodox views deemed either inauthentic or immaterial to the adjudication of official narratives by those with institutional power.

We now live firmly in that world of might makes right.

We just dress it up with American flag lapel pins and the almost phatic repetition of “defending democracy,” which — like the charge of “racist” often used to warn off deplorables — has lost any real meaning.

So it goes.

So it goes.