Dear Friends:

I was on the phone with my RPI colleague Adam Dick this week and in an uncharacteristic comment he captured what I had been feeling for some time: it appears the brakes are off the runaway train of political revengism. That’s not exactly what he said, but he conveyed back to me the same very strong sense of mal à l’aise that I had been feeling. 

From the bizarre spectacle of Impeachment 2.0 to the continuing – and intensifying – Covid crackdown, to the continuing merger of social media with government with the goal of silencing all dissidents outside the extreme center, it appears increasingly likely that the total state is here and it is intent on flexing its muscles.

If you have a different opinion on any of these issues you are not just a political opponent, but a “domestic terrorist” who needs to be silenced, shut down, destroyed, and perhaps incarcerated.

(This is not a partisan attack against Joe Biden because frankly I do not believe Biden is at the helm in any substantive way. Not that his four or so decades in “public service” do not indicate his attraction to the use of force and his embrace of authoritarianism.)

Exhibit one: I have not been watching the Impeachment 2.0 hearings live, but I have been following them on various news and social media sources. I feel fairly well informed of the important bits. House impeachment managers delivered a Resolution to the Senate stating very clearly that it was former President Trump’s speech on January 6th that contained specific phrases that served as an incitement to insurrection and was directly responsible for the melee that occurred at the US Capitol on that day.

They narrowed it down to that one speech.

They proceeded to argue Tuesday at the opening of the Senate trial that Trump’s words such as “fight like hell” and his insistence that the election was stolen were clearly criminal and justified removing him from office (which he does not hold) and barring him from ever running for office again (the real goal).

Surely, they claimed, the use of “fight like hell” was even worse than yelling “fire” in a crowded move theater!

But then something kind of funny happened: because public records are permanent, social media users began finding and identifying the numerous times the Democrats – and even the House impeachment managers – had used the same phrases and had even publicly challenged elections.

Nancy Pelosi in 2017 sounded a lot like Trump in 2020, telling people that the election was invalid and that Congress must “protect our democracy” – presumably by overturning the election.

House impeachment manager Rep. Jeremy Raskin sounded a lot like Trump’s team when he formally objected to the legitimacy of the election of Donald Trump in 2017.

But what about that call to arms “fight like hell”? Surely that was the smoking gun? Nope. 

House impeachment manager Rep. Eric Swalwell (D-CA) vowed to “fight like hell.” House lead manager Jeremy Raskin spoke of the need to “fight like hell.”

House impeachment manager Ted Lieu (R-CA) vowed to “fight like hell” against President Trump.

And in the ultimate blow that using the phrase “fight like hell” opens one up to impeachment for incitement to insurrection, President Joe Biden himself used the phrase in 2019.

Oh no this does not compute! The entire impeachment case rides on a phrase that literally all of the House managers and House leadership have used in the past. What to do?

Lie.

Even though any sentient reading of the House impeachment resolution would conclude that Trump’s January 6th speech was the sole trigger for the charge that he incited an “insurrection,” turning on a dime when caught in their lie, the impeachers then claimed that, c’mon man, it wasn’t that one speech at all. It was the pattern of Trump’s speeches leading up to that speech that inspired the “insurrection.”

This is not a defense of Trump, which our readers and subscribers will recall endured four years of RPI criticism for actual boneheaded policies – like bombing Syria, pulling out of the Iran deal, slapping sanctions on anything that moved, etc. – rather than phony, made-up offenses like “Russiagate.”

The case is a joke.

Exhibit two: Florida Governor Ron DeSantis decided in September that lockdowns and mask mandates were worthless in fighting the latest coronavirus, so he lifted all the state mandates and forbade local governments from levying fines on their own for such “infractions.” Fauci warned that a major disaster was coming for Florida. Bodies in the street. A bloodbath. 

But a funny thing happened on the way to the apocalypse: nothing. Florida, with no restrictions on businesses, no lockdowns, no mask mandates, did as well – mostly better – on cases per million and hospitalizations per million and deaths per million as California Governor Gavin “French Laundry” Newsom’s hyper-Stalinist gulag regime.

Florida should be a disaster, teeming with the hospitalized and the dead like a third world country. Instead this is Florida: