For the time being, I want to drop any analysis based on party affiliation and just look at the policies impacting America today and their potential outcomes.
For the purpose of this analysis, I would propose there are two interests being either directly or indirectly served (or not served) by these policies, let’s call them the Deep State (government) and the Free State (the people).
My standards of evaluation are simple: 1) Does the policy advance or retard the interests of government (i.e. the Deep State) or 2) Does the policy advance or retard the interests of the people (i.e. the Free State)?
I see policies , and I accept the possibility that I am missing a few, that include, but are not limited to:
Illegal immigration/open borders
Economic lockdowns
Public health hysteria
Federal and state medical/health mandates
Weak foreign policy
A diminished role in global political, commercial and military affairs (sort of an ideological isolationism leading to situations where we still pay the lion’s share, but don’t lead in making the decisions)
Runaway spending
Burgeoning public debt
Expansion of the welfare state
An arbitrary and capricious administration of justice
Restorative racialism (organizing policy creation, implementation and execution base on the belief that race determines human traits and capacities that require intervention to correct)
Corporatism (the organization of society by corporate groups, such as agricultural, labor, military, scientific, or guild associations)
Factionalism (when a group of persons form a cohesive, usually contentious minority within a larger group)
Reliance upon public/private partnerships for clandestine policy implementation (government and private companies working directly or indirectly hand in hand or private entities carrying out public policy)
I could do more, but to do so would seem unnecessary.
I know I asked that we forget about political parties, but given our current circumstances, that seems an impossibility – because whether overt or covert, these policies are real, are being carried out in real time and are imbedded in a particular ideology and political party – but who owns them does not matter in the assessment of which group benefits because that result stems from the policies themselves and stands on its own.
All of these policies share one commonality, they all increase the size, scope and power of the Deep State and diminish the rights and liberty of the Free State, of that there can be no dispute. Attempting to argue that these policies bolster the Free State would consist of an alternating series of fantasy and lies. Unfortunately, that does not stop people from trying. Most of the time they hope the people will just ignore the bigger picture, that the Free State is shrinking as their behaviors are modified in the manner of a pig learning to ring a bell to drop another couple pounds of corn into their troughs. In the pig’s frame of reference, he thinks he is free to ring that bell and eat all day, that is until the pig farmer stops filling the hopper when the pig gets fat enough to slaughter. The farmer’s frame of reference is much more expansive than the pig pen.
Pigs never learn the smell of cooking bacon, mostly because by the time the bacon sizzles, the pig is dead.
It is the same for people.
The skillet is already hot.