RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://amgreatness.com/2021/06/03/covid-19-has-forever-destroyed-americans-trust-in-experts/

As even many casual observers of America’s fractious politics are aware, the overwhelming majority of lawmaking at the federal level no longer takes place in Congress as the Constitution’s framers intended. Instead, the vast majority of the “rulemaking” governing Americans’ day-to-day lives now takes place behind closed doors, deep in the bowels of the administrative state’s sprawling bureaucracy. The brainchild of progressive President Woodrow Wilson, arguments on behalf of the modern administrative state are ultimately rooted in, among other factors, a disdain for the messy give-and-take of republican politics and an epistemological preference for rule by enlightened clerisy.

Put more simply, the most straightforward version of the argument offered by partisans of the administrative state amounts to, “Trust the experts.” And over the century-plus since Wilson’s presidency, the “trust the experts” leitmotif has moved well beyond the realm of prevailing dogma for mandarins in such agencies as the Food and Drug Administration and the Environmental Protection Agency. Rather, for large swaths of the citizenry and the elected official class, “trust the experts” now reigns supreme for everything from the military (“Trust the generals!”) to public health (“Trust the epidemiologists!”).

And therein lies the rub.

The trials and tribulations of COVID-19 in America have dealt an irreparable blow to the credibility of America’s ruling class and the ruling class’s implicit appeal to its authority as a coterie of highly trained and capable experts. No single person exemplifies this more than Dr. Anthony Fauci, who has attained celebrity status during the pandemic as the nation’s leading immunology and forward-facing spokesman for our public policy response. As Steve Deace and Todd Erzen detail in their new book, Faucian Bargain: The Most Powerful and Dangerous Bureaucrat in American History, Fauci has repeatedly contradicted himself throughout the pandemic, waffling on what the “science” demands at any given moment while still always seeming to err on the side of draconian overreaction.

https://amgreatness.com/2021/06/03/government-seeks-retribution-for-the-biden-resistance/

The U.S. government’s vengeance case against the Oath Keepers, a group that publicly declared its opposition to Joe Biden’s presidency, is now in its fourth iteration with no end in sight.

Biden’s Justice Department, led by a man denied a seat on the Supreme Court in 2016 by Senate Republicans and a woman loyal to both Barack Obama and Robert Mueller, is sparing no resource to destroy the lives of Americans tied to the group that allegedly “stormed” the Capitol on January 6.

Last week, Channing Phillips, the acting U.S. attorney for the District of Columbia overseeing the sprawling investigation into the events of January 6, filed another superseding indictment against the Oath Keepers while adding new defendants. Four men have been arrested since May 27; the total number of defendants is 16 and counting.

The Oath Keepers, as the media reminds us daily, pose a mortal threat to the country. As NPR recently warned, it is “one of the largest anti-government extremist groups in the far-right patriot militia movement.”  The group’s real crime, of course, is opposing Joe Biden; after the election, a founder of the Oath Keepers said the group would “resist” Biden’s presidency, an act of defiance considered mandatory in many quarters when it was directed at the Trump Administration from the Left.

Indispensible to the Narrative

So, retaliation is underway. The first grand jury indictment was filed one week after Inauguration Day; three alleged Oath Keepers—Thomas Caldwell, Jessica Watkins, and Donovan Crowl—were charged with four trespassing and disorderly conduct offenses. 

“The Oath Keepers are a large but loosely organized collection of militia who believe that the federal government has been co-opted by a shadowy conspiracy that is trying to strip American citizens of their rights,” Michael Sherwin, the prosecutor in charge of the early stage of the investigation who bragged about a “shock and awe” manhunt leading up to Biden’s inauguration, wrote in the original charging document. “The organization’s name alludes to the oath sworn by members of the military and police to defend the Constitution ‘from all enemies, foreign and domestic.’”

Since then, the Justice Department has tacked on a total of 13 counts and 13 more defendants with warnings of more to come. The prosecution of the Oath Keepers is critical in fueling the notion that groups of armed, pro-Trump vigilantes organized an assault on the seat of American democracy.