Biden Administration Has a Hypocrisy Problem
Radical policies are counter to American values and foundational culture.
Hypocrisy is a part of politics. Human beings err and seek to cover their tracks. Or they fail to see their own double standards. Politicians are especially susceptible, having to shift with the winds of public opinion, unforeseen events, and their own mistakes. But the Democrats have an acute case of hypocrisy: They have to lie because their policies are counter to reality. And this lying is fostering increasing distrust.
Most Republicans don’t have to lie, certainly not as profoundly. I didn’t say they don’t. I said they don’t have to. Witness Governor Ron DeSantis in Florida. He can openly state what he’s doing because he actually believes in both the soundness and fairness of his policies – freedom from government interference, parental decision-making on education, science-based COVID policies, and so on.
But President Biden and nearly the entire Democratic party need hypocrisy while trying to achieve nefarious ends by claiming to do something else. They are attempting to centralize and solidify a top-down government, a California-China one-party takeover, while claiming to help the middle and working classes. They are attempting to feather the nest of their donors in “green” industries, while claiming to mitigate climate change. But these are mere hypocritical moves. They are destroying the oil industry because it doesn’t vote Democrat. They are destroying true upward mobility because welfare helps no one long-term; it is only a reprieve that temporarily distracts from poverty. Stimulus checks are worth less and less as inflation grows and grows.
Other examples abound. On COVID, the Biden Administration has been a mess of “following the science” while ignoring an array of studies undermining their chosen narrative, most recently as it relates to children (link). Flouting rules in some of the worst “us vs. them” optics in recent memory. And changing policies so often and so counter-intuitively (masks for the vaccinated) that there are clearly political goals having nothing to do with virus transmission.
Their border policy has been, if possible, even worse. Many still cannot visit families abroad, where despite slower vaccine rollout, things are moving along well enough now. But individuals from any other part of the world, not just the Northern Triangle, can enter the southern border and be sent on their merry way. With a bus or plane ticket. With COVID. Meanwhile, the Cuban people revolt, wave U.S. flags, seek vocal support from America and, for some, the asylum we are indiscriminately granting others. But the Democrats ignore it. Cubans in 2020 largely voted Republican. And speaking of revolts…
With the January 6th commission, aka one riot among many, Democrats have made another miscalculation. Sentiment among Americans towards the Black Lives Matter movement was strong in the beginning because America is not a racist country and therefore allegations of police racism were profoundly upsetting to all Americans. But as it became clear BLM was not a hashtag related to civil rights, but an organization governed by Marxist principles with ulterior goals related to everything from wealth redistribution to nuclear family destruction, that support dropped. A lot. From 60% to 36% (link).
Americans don’t like violence, no matter the cause. The actual Civil Rights movement of the 1960s saw similar returns when it turned from MLK’s civil disobedience to violence. And despite the media’s shameful attempts to minimize the 2020 summer rioting, Americans saw cities burning. They saw business owners, many of whom were minorities and immigrants, have their livelihood and even their lives taken from them (including public servants such as David Dorn: link). Justifications claiming reparations or insurance coverage don’t sit well. Justifications by radicals, borrowed from the mouths of college professors, don’t convince hardworking Americans who envision the destruction of their own businesses and their own families.
On government spending, the Democrats’ plans are reducible to one clear objective: Universal Basic Income. After the fiasco of Defund the Police, which even Barack Obama criticized as imprudent political rhetoric (link), the Democrats realized achieving radical policy requires presenting cheap wine in fancy bottles. Universal Basic Income renders Americans reliant upon, and thus evidently subservient to, the whims of government’s largess. From COVID welfare and child “tax” payments (no longer tax credits) to federal eviction moratoriums and lavish spending currently overheating the economy, more government stimulus ties poorer Americans to the federal government. Even economists nowhere near right of center are dumbfounded, as Janet Yellen and the Fed itself no longer deny inflation is unlikely to ease up any time soon (link). This isn’t “aiding the middle class.” It’s entrenching a rapidly advancing oligarchy.
But enough of the examples. There is something deeper happening here.
Democrats’ strategy is premised on repeatedly lying and not getting caught, on managing this hypocrisy. Look, we get it. All politicians fib or lie or outrightly deceive. But it’s like a teenager: Tell the truth and gain trust and you might slip one by Mom and Dad when you know you did something wrong but you also feel bad and wouldn’t do it again and you really needed to lie just this once. But the pathological nature of this lying undermines representative government. Checks and balances or not, American politics rests to some degree on civic trust. Even our most immediate representatives in the House have a full two years to harm the country, as they pass legislation they fail even to read. Americans elect based on trust in the best individual for the job, in promises of fulfilling a particular agenda. The Biden Administration, though presenting itself as moderate and morally superior to its predecessor, is governing in the direction of a radical socialism, a radical socialism for which they have no mandate as down ballot voting made abundantly clear. This has fundamentally broken many Americans’ optimism and trust (link).
The problem with this hypocrisy is that it’s becoming laughably transparent. Plummeting news network ratings reveal this. But more than this: the Democrats’ policies are counter to American values and foundational culture. Hence the need for hypocrisy in the first place. When Republicans, often at the level of the states, argue for deregulation and lower taxes and sound immigration policies and robust federalism, these policies have deep roots in what it means to be American (and by the way, in what is currently attracting so much immigration here).
Big government can often fool the people, especially the young and imprudent, into handing over the keys to the kingdom. But all is not lost. The attraction of big, nay, intrusive government will hopefully wane as Democratic policies continue to fail. Crime, drug and human trafficking at the border, irrational COVID restrictions, voting malfeasance, and now Afghanistan, have led to “buyer’s regret” on Biden. And as these policies become more unhinged from reality by the day, voters will begin to see them for what they are: an elite power grab masquerading as good government.