What is happening in US politics at the moment is described well at a theoretical level by John Mearsheimer:
Thus each faction in a liberal democracy has a strong incentive to take over the state and not relinquish power to a rival faction. In the Middle East, this phenomenon is commonly referred to as “one man, one vote, one time.”122 Two motivating logics are at play here. Obviously, the faction that seized control would get to write the rules and not have to worry about losing a future election to a rival faction that might rewrite the rules.
Mearsheimer, John J.. The Great Delusion (The Henry L. Stimson Lectures Series) (p. 117). Yale University Press. Kindle Edition. Chp 4.
Here John Mearsheimer is discussing the “authoritarian temptation”. That is in a liberal and democratic state there is always a temptation for one faction try to capture the state. In recent years we have seen precisely this. The Democrats in the US do not want to complete at elections with Republicans so they try to stitch them up using quasi-legal procedures. The Trump-Russia hoax, based in large part on a fake dossier supplied for money by an ex-MI5 operative (who openly admitted subsequently that much of the information in his dossier was probably not true), was a case in point. A well-funded investigation turned up zero evidence of the supposed collusion between Trump and Russia. A few people were caught up in the investigation and were convicted of financial and other irregularities. In order to try to salvage something from their failed project the liberal media uniformly referred to these convictions as if they were somehow related to the original and core charge – Trump-Russia collusion, even though they weren’t.
The new indictment against Trump relates to a misdeclaration of campaign finance. No doubt it is against the law (if proven) – but it is hardly a crime in the sense of say fraud, robbery or violence. This will not stop the liberal press treating it as if it were a serious offence.
This is one example of how the Democrat press is going to work with the Democrat prosecutor to play this one:
The money was to reimburseCohen for a secret payoff to the adult film actress Stephanie Clifford, who goes by the name Stormy Daniels, delivered in the waning days of the 2016 presidential campaign. The jaw-dropping scene — in which the commander in chief and his fixer discussed hush money payments to a porn star in the Oval Office — was described two years later by Cohen in congressional testimony.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2023/03/21/trump-stormy-payments/
This “jaw-dropping scene” is being played for all its worth. In reality a pay-off to avoid a civil legal case was misdeclared. That’s it. But this is all the ammunition they can find and the Democrat attempt to seize control of the state will try to maximise its impact.
Democracy, that is electoral democracy, depends on a sense of fair play. All sides have to agree to play by the rules. What seems to be happening in the US at the moment is that the sides are no longer interested in “a fair fight”. They, especially the Democrats, are willing to do whatever it takes to win and seize control of the state. This, I think, is largely ideologically driven. It reflects new uncertainties; the new liberalism cannot tolerate disagreement. Its opinions e.g on transgender issues are elevated to the status of absolutes. Gone is the old idea of “I respect your right to have an opinion even if I disagree with you”. There can only be one truth. And so, there can only be one party. The obvious historical parallel is the way the Bolshevik party which seized power in Russia in 1917 set about eliminating all rival power bases including, eventually, even “factions” within the party itself. The cases and investigations against Trump are analogous to the Bolsheviks shooting political opponents.
(Update 4-4-23. It is reported today that the charges relate to “falsifying business records”. I don’t know how the rich and famous live but I would guess that it is completely routine to put pay-offs to troublesome former acquaintances made via one’s lawyer down to ‘legal expenses’. I would assume the prosecutor is simply banking on a politically partisan jury in an overwhelmingly Democrat area. This is so blatantly a political stitch-up it really is surreal – the most surreal aspect being the way the liberal press will resolutely pretend this is all just the normal flow of ‘justice’. Incredible that the liberal cheerleaders are willing to stoop quite so low. Power corrupts and the desire for power corrupts).
Another way of course that democracy gets subverted is the two main parties simply agree a stitch-up between themselves, agreeing on more or less everything, while continuing to pretend to the electorate that they offer substantive differences. In this case the media generally plays along as its business model depends on there being a contest between the parties to report on. This is, more or less, what is currently happening in UK politics. In this case the state has been captured by a cross-party careerist political class who essentially implement corporate-finance policies in exchange for lucrative kick-backs. (Look, for example, at the money-earning careers of all three of the last three UK Prime Ministers).
The New Observer 
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