Potpourri Post: Inflation, Panic Pandemic, Deep State

Breitbart is reporting that a new poll shows that Americans are very concerned about inflation--a finding that I've been predicting. The good or bad news, depending on how you look at it, is that the reasons for the concern are unlikely to vanish before Election 2022.

Poll: Voters Are Overwhelmingly Concerned About Inflation

"Overwhelmingly." That's what I meant when I said "very."

Voters in battleground districts are overwhelmingly concerned about inflation and the rising cost of living, according to a recent poll commissioned by the American Action Network to show to the House Republican leadership this week.

Eighty-eight percent of the respondents said they are worried about the rising cost of living, and 53 percent had said they were extremely or very worried. When asked about the rising inflation, 86 percent of the respondents said they were worried, and about half (50 percent) of the respondents said they were extremely or very worried.

...

More so, one part that shows good support for Republicans is that 75 percent of the respondents also agreed it is the “Democrat spending proposals that could cause inflation.” Due to these results, 84 percent of the respondents said they would vote generic Republican, versus the 10 percent that said they would vote for the generic Democrat.

Ouch.

City Journal has a long analytical piece that tries to examine what's behind the pandemic of fearmongering from the Power Elite that we've suffered through for the past year and a half:

The Panic Pandemic

Fearmongering from journalists, scientists, and politicians did more harm than the virus.

You'll have to make of it what you will. Here's the intro:

The United States suffered through two lethal waves of contagion in the past year and a half. The first was a viral pandemic that killed about one in 500 Americans—typically, a person over 75 suffering from other serious conditions. The second, and far more catastrophic, was a moral panic that swept the nation’s guiding institutions.

Instead of keeping calm and carrying on, the American elite flouted the norms of governance, journalism, academic freedom—and, worst of all, science. They misled the public about the origins of the virus and the true risk that it posed. Ignoring their own carefully prepared plans for a pandemic, they claimed unprecedented powers to impose untested strategies, with terrible collateral damage. As evidence of their mistakes mounted, they stifled debate by vilifying dissenters, censoring criticism, and suppressing scientific research.

If, as seems increasingly plausible, the coronavirus that causes Covid-19 leaked out of a laboratory in Wuhan, it is the costliest blunder ever committed by scientists. Whatever the pandemic’s origin, the response to it is the worst mistake in the history of the public-health profession. We still have no convincing evidence that the lockdowns saved lives, but lots of evidence that they have already cost lives and will prove deadlier in the long run than the virus itself.

One in three people worldwide lost a job or a business during the lockdowns, and half saw their earnings drop, according to a Gallup poll. Children, never at risk from the virus, in many places essentially lost a year of school. The economic and health consequences were felt most acutely among the less affluent in America and in the rest of the world, where the World Bank estimates that more than 100 million have been pushed into extreme poverty.

The leaders responsible for these disasters continue to pretend that their policies worked and assume that they can keep fooling the public. They’ve promised to deploy these strategies again in the future, and they might even succeed in doing so—unless we begin to understand what went wrong.

The panic was started, as usual, by journalists.

At least there seems to be some evidence that the public is starting to slowly wise up to this.

Finally, the Deep State. Two articles at American Greatness. One focuses on a specific incident, the other takes a broader approach.

The first:

When the CIA Kills Americans

You might think this is about drone strikes, but it's not. It's about Enrique Camarena. The article attempts to make the case that the CIA played a significant part in Camarena's death in 1985 at the hands of Mexican drug cartels and corrupt government agents. I can't judge, but some of the evidence seems compelling.

The second article examines the role of the US military in modern American governance:

The Military Plays No Part in the Constitution’s ‘Checks and Balances’

This is pretty obviously an issue that the country will need to address if we're to remain (?) a constitutional republic rather than a de facto junta. The first part of the article focuses on "Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Mark Milley and other high-ranking generals" and their effort "to undermine President Trump during the final year of his administration." Later the author acknowledges also the role of the intelligence agencies:

While Milley and others wrap their power grab in the rhetoric of upholding constitutional principles, a cursory review of the Constitution and the founders’ writings shows that this is just a pose.  

...

This notion of individuals within the executive branch being a check on the president is a peculiar one. One branch cannot check itself. The executive from whom their power is derived is the president. We saw the first hint of this novelty in Lieutenant Colonel Alexander Vindman’s stated belief that the president had no authority to countermand the “consensus views of the interagency.” 

The Constitution provides for three branches of government, each having separate powers. They have the limited ability to check and balance one another. Two of the branches have direct democratic accountability. The judiciary is uniquely independent of ordinary politics, but it is limited by the “case and controversy” requirement, and its members obtain their appointments from the combined decision-making of the executive and legislative branch. Executive branch agencies, bureaucrats, and most especially the military are never supposed to be a check or balance against anyone, especially the president. 

...

The military’s recent foray into left-leaning partisanship is particularly toxic, ... the unelected bureaucrats, think-tankers, journalists, lawyers, and perfumed princes make up a privileged and insular managerial class, whose interests and views of the world deviate widely from the country at large. 

In the name of defending the Constitution and its principles, the deep state and its military fellow travelers have expressed a far greater threat to democratic self-government than Trump’s challenge to the election results in the courts and in the court of public opinion. Now that someone more compliant is in office, the same people ominously offer the military to occupy the nation’s capital and turn their arms against Americans, whom they defame as Nazis. 

The chief barrier to the domestic misuse of the military is the democratic accountability and control of the president, along with the “doomsday option” of American arms. But it is not clear the military would be turned back from such efforts if some future election turned out “wrong” and the military and the managerial class deemed these efforts essential to fight against “domestic extremism.” 

After all, we saw civil servants, FBI heads, and military officers willingly take up the mantle of #TheResistance in response to Trump’s 2016 victory. The military, along with many others in the executive branch, convinced themselves they are entitled to resist presidents and policies they do not like in the name of vague principles derived from the Constitution, even though the words of the Constitution say the opposite. 

The military’s embrace of such a principle would mean the true death of constitutionally limited government. If the military conceives of itself as subordinate not to the elected president but to an unelected managerial class, the founders’ seemingly archaic concern for standing armies would be proven to be more relevant than ever.