Jeffrey Ventrella, Brownstone Institute, 6/24
It’s been a painful four years watching the experts, backed by power, dismantle all the foundations of the good life, and yet not be held accountable for the results.
The astonishing debate scene between Trump and Biden makes the point and leaves us with a strange new reality. The facade at the top has cracked in full view of the entire planet. The problems in evidence have been there for years and yet no establishment voices have revealed them. It’s been the opposite actually. Talk about Biden’s issues has been deemed disinformation.
Indeed, a message sent to Brownstone’s own Google Group before the debate concerning Biden’s prospects in the debate was deleted by Google. That’s never happened in 20 years of my experience with this platform. The near-monopolist on search deleted as a speech violation what the whole world would know is true later that evening.
Indeed, vast numbers of people know the truth. But no official sources will tell the fullness of it, even as the opportunity and venues in which the truth can be told are shrinking daily.
We are increasingly watching public life as a fabulistic theater. It only holds our attention because we wonder how much truth the elites are going to allow to be leaked and why.
And this new system is toying with the core of expectations for the future. Are we doomed or will we come back from the brink? There is darkness before dawn but just how dark must it become before we see the signs of hope?
For example, from the Supreme Court this week we received terrible news (free speech on the Internet is nearly at an end) but also good news (the administrative state cannot do whatever it wants and the reigning political party cannot jail its political opponents on spurious grounds).
Therefore, on the one hand, as the empire ends and the darkness in the West descends ever further, we will hear ever less about it, much less openly discuss the cause. On the other hand, the expert class that is tearing apart the good life now faces some problematic barriers to their unmitigated power.
In that sense, the Trump/Biden debate last night had all the elements we needed to understand the moment. It was a completely different experience from any ever seen on TV. It’s not just that Biden fell apart last night. It’s that the experience revealed what’s been true for a very long time and has not been reported. It’s been censored. That’s a further blow to the whole credibility of the media.
Then the world woke up in the aftermath to the whole of the establishment media, which only 24 hours earlier said that talk of Biden’s decline was misinformation, now saying that Biden absolutely must be replaced on the Democratic ticket, otherwise Trump will win the election. It happened that fast. Then, only a few hours later, the Biden campaign and his minions have said absolutely not: he will go the full distance.
It all raises the big questions. Was the debate scheduled so early, before the conventions and nominations, precisely to let Biden fail on his own so he could be replaced? If so, that is very cruel. Or was this not foreseen and now we see authentic reactions from a whole class of media and intellectual elites who are panicked about the future?
Was this a planned crash and burn or an inadvertent collapse? And what happens when there is such a huge divergence of strategy within the ruling class structure?
To be sure, there is an element of fakery about the whole drama. Elon Musk said it plainly, as is his way: “They’re just talking puppets. It was a setup for a switch.”
Alex Berenson offered this reaction to the June 27th debate between Trump and Biden: “This reminds me of the last days of the Soviet Union. Everyone knew it was over, someone close to the top just had to be the first to say so, and then the collapse was both inevitable and immediate.”
The strangeness and tragedy of last night’s content were intensified by the oddly clinical and bloodless staging: mics and technology on timers, no audience, and robotic questions read by expressionless professionals. It was a real-life mockumentary of two octogenarians navigating an AI world, with the system rigged to make a sadly non-functioning elderly person (a stand-in no different from Chernenko or Brezhnev) seem vaguely functional.
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Even that did not work.
It’s Darkest Before Dawn
An interesting discussion which I think could stand further discussion. I’m not one who jumps to conclusions without considering other views.
It asks the question, “Was this (debate) a planned crash and burn (by the Democrats) or an inadvertent collapse?”. I’d say that the since the Dems seemed to have no one waiting in the wings who could make a big enough splash, they themselves didn’t know what the results would be if they stuck with Biden or not. They did the debate to test for that.
RFK, jr. was non-negotiable to them since he had no support from Democrat regulars, the administrative state, the intelligence state, and the media. He could only attract Democrats capable of being disgruntled, or those others with TDS.
Since Trump’s outlook looks so favorable, they’ll be looking for other ways to “stop” him. Some Dem extremists speak about violence, which is par for extremists. Let’s hope the Dem party hierarchy is above that even though they don’t seem too far removed from it judging by their speech. Or that may be their hierarchy’s way to rally their base, who knows? Surely they would consent to a peaceful transfer of power as has always happened in the past?
Incidentally, since the SC cancelled their abuse of the law to conduct lawfare operations, their already extremist speech has become even more violent.