American Consequences - January 2021

Whether it is Antifa or BLM’s desecration of our national monuments... the assault of federal court buildings... or the breach of the hallowed chambers of Congress by MAGA supporters, these acts are all linked. They occurred because Americans on both sides of the political divide have utterly lost faith in the legacy parties’ willingness or even capacity to represent their desires, whether those desires are rational and reasonable, Utopian, or extreme. one by one. He goes on to defeat Democratic rival Hillary Clinton, despite being outspent 2-to-1. How does this happen? It happens because of the “uniparty.” Understanding the uniparty’s rise and arrogant dismissal of those who its members are meant to represent is essential to understanding the violence of the last 10 months. Whether it is Antifa or BLM’s desecration of our national monuments... the assault of federal court buildings... or the breach of the hallowed chambers of Congress by MAGA supporters, these acts are all linked. They occurred because Americans on

This term, almost synonymous with the Deep State, has a disputed parentage. Some people on the Right, such as Steve Bannon, former chief strategist to President Donald Trump, have made the term popular of late, but others have traced its etymology all the way back to the iconoclastic, anti-establishment activist Ralph Nader’s 2002 text Crashing the Party and beyond. Regardless of who the granddaddy of the phrase is, its importance lies in its capacity to explain how Ukraine and Cambodia are more important to both parties than suffering Americans. Just look at the last years in national politics. The establishment faced a dual challenge that continues to rock national politics. First, there was the stooped, aged Socialist who honeymooned in the Soviet Union. Then there was the billionaire reality TV star from Queens. Neither Bernie’s rise nor the Trump presidency can be understood without the other. How can millennials, barely out of college, connect with and scream in approval for an old man unable to comb his hair, unless it is because his calls for “social justice” resonate in ways that show Nancy Pelosi and her $100-per-gallon ice cream interviews for what they are, depictions of a Left that has lost all sense of who they profess to stand up for. Then there is the remarkable phenomenon of a nonpolitician, a billionaire from Manhattan who declares his run for the GOP nomination for president. He is ridiculed and lambasted by his own party’s celebrities until he defeats all the establishment Republican candidates,

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January 2021

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