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and The institutional Democrat Party has persisted in a manner reminiscent of extremophile bacterias; by all accounts, it should have died off after the Civil War, which was a war to preserve the political cause (slavery) and the culture (the Southern Plantation) for which and in which the party existed.

Rarely has an institution lost its war, its political mainspring, and its cultural reserve without being properly destroyed along with them, but the Democrat party is, like extremophile bacterias, apparently exceptional.

Functionally, it is most similar to a parasite. Over a historically short period of time, it has embedded its post-WWII ideology in the entire complex of social institutions: universities, media, flagship magazines, entertainment studios, corporate offices, awards organizations, non-profits, NGOs, the Federal Bureaucracy, law firms, medical regulatory agencies, the Military, the Pentagon, k-12 education, labor unions, and the philanthropic and charity industry.

Once embedded, it begins digesting the riches of the host institution: knowledge, information and its arrangements, aesthetic joy and its objects, military lethality, cultural prestige, scientific reputation–the peculiar treasure and authority of each institution is consumed, then brought to bear in service of the ideological project.

An Explanation?

Certain folk prefer absolute precision; they do not want to confuse the Democrat Party with modern Leftism per se. Although I acknowledge the historical anxieties my approach might awaken, I imagine the party of abortion fandom, transgenderism, anti-populism, and repressive tolerance as sufficiently representative of Leftism’s most atrocious tendencies.

It has been often said: ideology follows on lifestyle. The Democrat party is run by coastal elites and urban aristocrats. These are people whose wealth is not tied to the well-being of American land; their assets are primarily global and abstract. Their education is a pedagogical discipline that trains the appreciation of multi-culture, which means no culture in particular, no religion, no orthodoxy of ethics, no national identity–none of the distinct features which make the face of a society. Only a cosmopolitan lifestyle which obfuscates any form of belonging to one specific place.

For them, the American middle class dream is parochial in the sense of existentially petty. The American middle class citizen aspires to a moderate amount of wealth and small amounts of leisure; their greatest asset is usually a single home sitting on American soil. The traditional vision was that an American middle class parent would be able to save part of his income, then buy better opportunities for his children (investment funds, college accounts).

Such people, for an aristocrat, are repulsive, living a life of inconsequential well-being, actually content (can you imagine that) with their immediate surroundings, their pitiful amount of disposable income, the cliched ambitions of family and faith which they pass down to their children, their belief that loyalty to the nation (instead of a global order) is somehow an enlargement of their spirit.

The middle class live the most caricatured version of an elite life; for the elites, the middle class is a jealous, buffoonish imitation of them.

Ideology Omnia Vincit

As a description of elitist mindsets, this is probably superb, but when political power is concerned, we must wonder why the Democrat strategy seems to be self-consciously primed toward electoral catastrophe.

Don’t, we sheepishly puzzle, DON’T THEY WANT TO WIN AN ELECTION AGAIN?

Such naive inquiries ignore the standing reserves of the Left’s power, which are not popular sentiment, but rather institutional dominance. Have any of the signature achievements of the postmodern Left been accomplished through honest populism? Abortion? The Mount Sinai Supreme Court decided when rights were obligated and when life began. Gay marriage? Never; that was the Mount Sinai SCOTUS also. “Gender” discrimination as a civil rights cause? Alas, the Mount Sinai Supreme Court.

Oh, how about open borders, or, pardon me, the “humanizing of immigration policy?” Rogue executive and state-level actions.

Were we not witness to the hysteria over the return of abortion to the states, the most democratic policy move this side of “rule by the people”? Thousands fewer dead children? This was the end of women’s rights?

Democrat strategy is constructed around past effective methods regarding salient policy issues.

One does not need to appeal in a humble, persistent way to the instincts and principles of the people if one teaches their children from ages 5 to 22 what is right and wrong, who history’s villains and heroes are, what systems of economy, law, and social welfare they should support, and which “isms” perpetuate virtue. The future has already been bought off. Ascendance becomes inevitable.

If the universities from which come the whole contingent of important lawyers, judges, doctors, think-tankers, memo writers, congressional staffers, bureaucratic advisers are uniform in ideology, political power has already been secured. Democracy becomes then a figurative ritual, nothing more.

If the three aspects of power–judicial, legislative, executive–are each decade apportioned more towards the unelected, and less towards the elected politicians, the simple, common sense obsessions of the average American dissipate into election cycle grievances, with no further governmental impact.

The more we consider the insurgent anti-populism of the Democrat party, the more ridiculous the advice of critics sounds who say, “The Left must become a popular cause again. They must abandon the fringe and advance on the center. They must cede their left flank and return to common sense.”

Yes, and I must remember to look at the unicorn next time I go to the zoo.

The Left despises representative government on two different ideological scores: firstly, they suppose that the moral superiority of their cause gives them an equally superior claim to power. A progressive may indeed have a less “palatable” agenda; he may even lose the election in formal terms, but any time power is abandoned to the unawokened, it is a theft and a travesty. Donald Trump is more illegitimate than any illegally ensconced Democrat could be.

Secondly, they “understand” how governance is a social and moral science; it is an activity which requires expertise and specialized knowledge. It is not merely a matter of the just and equitable distribution of state resources; it is the just and equitable distribution of state privileges, chief among them what used to be called “God-given rights”. That was before God died and before government became so total.

A right is a mark and guarantee of elevated status. To speak, for example, of parental rights risks elevating the notion that parents are uniquely privileged to guide the upbringing of their children. And what if they are homophobes? And what if they are transphobes? And what is they are racists? Dispensing rights is a sensitive business, with strong potential to derail the ideological project if the wrong persons should secure them; any careful leftist knows as much.

Any careful leftist also knows that the ideology has resilience; administrative process, which has been used as grounds by numerous rogue judges to set aside executive action, is not meant to prevent revolution; it is meant to prevent reform.

Joe Biden unilaterally extended temporary protected status and parole to hundreds of thousands of illegal aliens, and nary a tap from any district court gavel. But if Donald Trump attempts to revoke unlawful executive action, administrative process preserves it.

These examples might be quoted ad infinitum.

4 years of intensive chemotherapy may send a cancer into remission, but the body politic is larger than most bodies, and it’s been infected far longer.

The Trumpian project is a generational one. It continues 4 years, 8 years, and 12 years hence.

Facing the total implosion of their century-long project, the Left can only graft their own unfathomable hate onto the intentions of their enemies.

Violence is the soul’s revenge on its own impotence. Though it is doubtful the Democrat party has a soul, its impotence is undeniable.

There is nothing for it to do now except change, but since it cannot do that, it is reduced to the plotting serpent, who looks enviously at the good fruits of the Trump administration, and contemplates how to turn all of them into poison apples, into occasions for the destruction of the country.