It seems a number of Republicans are confused by the DNC’s desire to expand the size, scope, and regulatory authority of government – taking a much more active role over every aspect of our lives – while simultaneously wanting to take away the government’s enforcement apparatus. It seems like a logical question: If the Democrats want to expand the law, shouldn’t they also want to expand the police? What is the law if you do not enforce it?
There are two reasons why this seeming contradiction makes sense, at least from the perspective of the hard left.
The first relates to identity politics. Those who believe in identity politics believe there is more diversity between identity groups than there is within them. Not only that, but they believe members of an identity group are interchangeable – that they are essentially the same.
Joe Biden believes in identity politics. That is why he keeps saying things that imply that all black people are the same. To Joe “y’aint black” Biden, they are all the same. He gets away with saying really racist things because many of the people on the left agree with him.
Every identity group has criminal elements, so those who believe in identity groups have to come up with a reason why some members of an identity group commit crimes when others do not. It cannot be because people are different – identity group believers reject individualism – so it must be something else.
People who believe in identity politics believe that external forces working on some members of different identity groups cause crime. Poverty causes crime. Homelessness causes crime. Hunger causes crime. Racism causes crime.
The police are racist, and thus the police cause crime.
In this view, a criminal is someone upon whom external forces conspired to corrupt. If you remove the external forces, you remove the corruption.
If you believe this crap, it makes sense to dissolve the police, replacing them with social programs designed to remove the external forces causing crime. The fact that no society that has ever followed these beliefs has ever seen a reduction in crime does not dissuade the identity group adherent. Those who believe in identity groups have a religious zeal – they will not change.
Luckily, not everyone on the left believes that crap. Most younger people do, but as you move up in age, fewer people believe in identity politics.
The other reason expanding the role of government while reducing its enforcement arm makes sense is based on the teachings of Leon Trotsky. Trotsky taught that laws are not necessary. What is necessary is power, along with the willingness to use it with brutality. Simply put, if you have power, and you are brutal with it, then whatever you enforce is the law, quite independently of what people in far away places might pass in hallowed halls.
Trotsky never fully implemented this vision, but Mao did. Mao took power by talking different parts of China into dissolving their police, and replacing them with ‘community policing.’ The ‘community police’ just happened to also be Mao’s red army.
If we do it Mao’s way, Black Lives Matter and ANTIFA will take over the enforcement of the law, and whatever these groups enforce will be the law, quite independently of what anyone in elected office might enact. The law is not what is passed in Congress; the law is whatever is enforced in the street. Leon Trotsky was right…
Once Mao was in control of China’s policing, the law was whatever Mao enforced. Mao did not need to be elected, and he did not need people in hallowed halls to pass anything. He simply enforced his cultural revolution, and wrote his edicts down after the fact.
Wherever American cities dissolve the police, we will see the same sort of revolution take place. As these areas become larger and more organized, they will band together to take over areas not already under their control, just as Trotsky taught, and just as Mao implemented.
The law is whatever is enforced. Those who have power, and the will to use it with brutality, are in charge.
Identity group politics, incidentally, is a part of critical theory, which is the theory that if you can fracture a society into identity groups, and then turn those identity groups against society as a whole, Western Society will crumble, making way for a new socialist order. This theory was created by writers, such as Max Horkheimer, Theodor W. Adorno, Erich Fromm, and Herbert Marcuse.
What, exactly, American style communism will look like, is hard to say. The Frankfurt School was inspired by Soviet-style socialism, and the Soviets were working on our society from the 1920s, right up until the Soviet Union collapsed in 1990. Their influence did not really take hold until the hippie movement (which was a reaction to the Vietnam War), but from the late 1960s through the 1990s, Soviet-style socialism grew in popularity, particularly in academia.
When the Soviets collapsed, the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) stepped in, building upon what the Soviets had started. The CCP began making deals with American media houses, in which China allowed our media houses to produce media for the Chinese market, and in return those media houses agreed to submit, voluntarily, to censorship by the CCP, within the American market.
Our media houses also began to merge, such that today there are only a few of them for China to control.
Today, our access to information – the news – is controlled by the CCP. If the CCP does not like Trump, the American people are inundated with a constant barrage of anti-Trump ‘news’ until the people do not like Trump either.
The Mao-like anti-police movement? Our media LOVES it.
Identity politics? According to our media, everything related to identity groups is gospel truth.
Biden can say as many racist things as he wants. The media ignores it. Trump, in the meantime, need say or do nothing to be proven a racist. The fact that Trump and his supporters are racists – that is to our media, and through it the majority of our public – an unassailable truth.
Beware, incidentally, of unassailable truths. Often when a truth becomes unassailable, it is because it is not true at all, and making it unassailable is the only way to keep people believing it…
When Mao died, China began to change. Today’s China is not really Maoist-style communism, so much as a hybrid of communism and fascism, with quasi-private businesses that are almost always fully owned subsidiaries of the Chinese government.
What will our new model look like? Vote Biden if you wish to find out…
Thank you. Provocative as usual.