It’s Not Strategy — It’s Erosion

Lunacy v. Apathy, and Lunacy is winning

Image compiled by author from stock footage. Background source unknown.

Media and pundits often explain away every major political disaster in the United States as part of some long-term, 4-D chess match, one in which Republicans, or conservatives, or Christian nationalists, or white supremacists, or whomever, have made another brilliant move toward their inevitable checkmate.

The identity of the moustache-twisting strategist always shifts slightly, depending upon the nature of the latest travesty. In every single instance, whatever dark forces fuel the day’s clickbait, they are treated like Bond villains — supremely ingenious, terrifyingly malevolent characters, all but undefeatable. Then we slide further into despair.

Stop doing this.

Assuming the existence of a generations-long strategy to achieve the goal of establishing a theocratic kingdom ascribes agency where there is none. Sure, there are some who think over the long-term and act accordingly; Mitch McConnell comes to mind. But even ‘Moscow Mitch,’ as some are now calling him, is not this nefariously clever.

It does not take Bobby Fischer-level foresight to figure out how to capitalize on the death of one bad Supreme Court justice to replace him with a worse one. Nor does it require any brilliance to make up stories about the impropriety of choosing justices in an election year, only to do it in the very next one.

Billionaires need not predict the precise evolution of progressivism over decades to understand that buying Supreme Court justices will have long-term benefits toward destroying it. Self-described ‘think tanks’ do not require bones-throwers to know that having a plan to manipulate a second Trump administration will be accelerated by recruiting loyalists even before he is reelected. Energy executives do not need to employ tea-leaf readers to dream up the idea of bringing their own handwritten executive orders wrapped in billions of dollars to convince an illiterate president to-be to sign them should he regain the office.

To suggest that the recent shift in American politics is part of a some brilliant plan concocted decades ago by evil men in a dark, smoky room who knew its successful execution wouldn’t happen until long after their deaths is tinfoil hat stuff.

It requires that such self-centered people care more about the cause than themselves or their power or position. This is objectively not so. William Barr, the disgraced attorney general under Donald Trump, defeated this argument perfectly:

Everyone dies and I am not, you know, I don’t believe in the Homeric idea that… immortality comes by… having odes sung about you over the centuries, you know.

Barr inadvertently described every powerbroker; these are not people of principle concerned about their legacies, however distorted. Rather, they are selfish fools beset with arrogance, driven by opportunism, seeking benefits now at the expense of others.

• Do you think Elon Musk, who thought it wise to call a cave-diving hero a ‘pedo,’ reclines in his den with Joe Rogan smoking a joint while developing workable plans to colonize Mars? No. He’s just a fraud posing as a genius tech futurist to satisfy his ego while stuffing his bank account.
• Do you think that Trump, who stood at the Presidential podium and wondered whether injecting disinfectant can cure disease, sits on his golden toilet planning how he can remake government in his image for generations to come? No. He says whatever the political winds suggest to him to obtain power to immunize him from prison. His problem is that he’s just an idiot, and a criminal.
• Do you think that Sam Alito, while raising an insurrection-supporting upside down flag at his home, ponders how he will rule on a given case to solidify his legacy as the next Joseph Story? No. He’s just drunk on his own power and so arrogant he does not think his life-tenure will ever be threatened with consequences.
• Do you think Gene Hamilton of Project 2025, who crossed his arms and contemptuously rolled his eyes at Representative Jasmine Crockett, pens that treasonous document to secure a safe future for his children or grandchildren? No. He’s just a racist opportunist thirsting for prestige.
• Do you think Marjorie Taylor Greene posits the existence of Jewish space lasers in the hope of preventing future wildfires and preserving the environment? No. She’s just objectively stupid and pandering to her equally puerile supporters.

Opportunism breeds filth, and many in government — or those who desperately want to be — right now are very dirty. Trump and numerous others attempted to defraud the American people during the 2020 election, and were helped by people holding official positions who used their inherent authority.

Fortunately, the attempt was beset with idiocy, which is why he and dozens of others have been indicted and the plan failed. Many more should have been indicted, and may still find themselves in the crosshairs for their participation. Some of these are sitting members of Congress — Senators Lindsey Graham, Ron Johnson, Ted Cruz, and Josh Hawley, to name a few.

The House of Representatives is in such a state of disrepair that its dysfunction cannot neatly be summed up in a collection of volumes, let alone a few sentences. One hundred forty-seven members sought to enable the coup by withholding their certification votes on January 6.

Many today try to obstruct justice on Trump’s behalf. The Supreme Court is riddled with corruption that should lead to indictments, at least of Clarence Thomas, and probably of Neil Gorsuch and Sam Alito. State governments across the country are engaged in an abundance of malfeasance, utterly disregarding constitutional axioms.

These people succeed in their devilry because some portion of the American public is flatly stupid or intellectually lazy, but a much larger part is simply apathetic. These schemers aren’t cashing in on a carefully crafted plot designed decades ago to lead society to a predetermined point of vulnerability; they simply recognize that some confluence of circumstances have come together where the intellectually and morally bankrupt can prosper.

They understand that the seemingly largest chunk of people paying attention are easily duped by Fox-fed propaganda, no matter how nonsensical it is. They know that those who easily detect and reject their moronic lies and derisory theatrics have become so desensitized they don’t bother to do anything. And thus the schemers are capitalizing on this fortuitous chance.

Most of these villains do not know or understand the series of historical trajectories that led to this moment, and thus could never truly manipulate them. The Marjorie Taylor Greenes of government, or the Elon Musks of business fundamentally lack the mental acuity to engage in any level of serious examination. The Sam Alitos, Gene Hamiltons, and Bill Barrs don’t care.

What apparatuses built this vortex of chaos are nuanced and complex, which both exacerbate and obscure their sum effect, especially among a poorly educated populace. One can point to any number of contributing factors — Reaganomics that handed power to the wealthy, gerrymandering that empowers some voters while disenfranchising others, social media that disproportionately elevates the voices of the most extreme liars, Citizens United that turned money into protected speech, and deregulation that worsens the lives of most people, among innumerable others.

But these causal factors are too complicated, their results too lucky, to find behind them a detailed or specific plan. What the right has engaged in amounts more to throwing mud at the wall in sufficient amounts to get just enough to stick.

And enough has indeed stuck. The electorate has effectively opened the door to authoritarianism over a long period of erosion, driven by apathy and foolishness. Each of these historical causal factors requires detailed analysis to trace their origins and mechanisms. To reach even a provincial comprehension of their combined net effect demands a reasonably substantive understanding of a number of disciplines.

But without such understanding, preventing or reversing their nefarious results is far more difficult. It is why people simplistically and routinely blame the sitting president for inflation, for example. Americans facing challenges just in paying bills will assert that they simply “do not have time” to explore any of the requisite concepts, let alone the interweaving of them. But in reality, this is a subtle way to say without saying that they do not want to know, or at least do not want to try.

Solving problems is hard, complaining about them is easy. Compared to the rest of the world, much of America is vastly richer. Even the drain-circling middle class possesses a median income well above other G-8 countries. And Americans just want it to stay that way without any specific contribution toward its maintenance. As long as the comfort carrot is dangled just enough, the majority is happy to look the other way from virtually any level of malfeasance. Until they come for me, I am unconcerned with thee.

I saw a friend recently post on social media something that was factually untrue — so obviously false that it took all of five seconds to refute. When I pointed this out, his response was that he doesn’t care that it is false. The unspoken element of his answer was that the lie in his post simply reinforced something he wants to believe. It (wrongly) blamed a certain group for one of the deficiencies in his own life.

This friend of mine is very intelligent and a deep thinker — but not on certain things. On politics in particular, he is intensely emotional but not at all intellectual. His approach to political issues reveals a deep-seated anger for which he cannot identify any evidence-based cause. Instead, he arbitrarily selects and blames a boogeyman for his troubles. Interestingly, that boogeyman is always one spoon-fed to him by media he claims never to watch.

Yet, I do not doubt he truly thinks that he himself determines the identity of the villain by his own deduction. In some cases, this malefactor works for the other ‘side,’ engaging in some imagined impropriety that contributes directly to his various maladies. At other times, his chosen devil (often a random group of ‘others’) indirectly does so and gives him cause to angrily wish for harm against them. Having an enemy to blame is eternally easier than a problem to solve.

Our political decline of the moment is not the end-result of some nefarious, carefully drawn-up plot. It is the result of opportunistic right wing piranhas swimming toward the smell of chum. People in power who are not fully awash in selfishness and corruption fecklessly stand by while the feeding frenzies proceed.

Their paralysis arises from concerns about themselves looking ‘authoritarian’ or ‘oppressive’ should they endeavor to properly destroy evil with institutional force. It is what happens when a system becomes infused with corrupt cash to the point that none can function without it; the good and the bad are equally beholden to the scoundrels offering it and their associated agendas. And monied agendas — left or right leaning — rarely align with ours.

The good maybe want to do something, but they quiver in fear. Leveraging power against right-wing fanatics, they worry, might mean fewer donations from their own powerful backers in the next election cycle. Doing nothing carries far less electoral danger. When the electorate itself is lazy, indifferent, or incapable of evaluating the reality of the situation, the non-action of nervous politicians becomes even more sensible. What point is there in rocking a boat no one seems to care about?

We are, thus, stuck in a frightening catch-22. Politicians won’t act with vigor if the electorate does not show any care for them to do so. Voters will not rise up if their chosen politicians continue to shy away from leveraging power and taking useful action against the monsters on the right. Defeat will just go on, a seemingly self-defining cycle.

It is incumbent on those with power or a significant voice to spoon feed reality to everyone else. As in writing, in politics it is better to show not tell. The criminal clowns of the right have honed the craft of ‘showing’ to their constituents with Oscar-level skill.

Through their theatrics they’ve convinced people to disbelieve their own eyes, to accept that which they know is false, and to humiliate themselves all in the name of insane right wing ideas. As an example, Trump supporters actually wear diapers at rallies in support of their leader who has been accused of shitting his pants on a regular basis. They wear them precisely because he has been accused!

Meanwhile, people with good intentions keep doing the equivalent of releasing chapters of War and Peace, monotonously read on audiobooks. They traipse about with charts showing how good the economy is or how many jobs the Biden administration has created. They talk about suing this or that politician or entity for some constitutional violation, explaining their case in bland legalese.

But this is boring, ignored by left and right wing media alike. It resonates only with pundits on obscure channels, and scholars in academic papers. Even ferocious advocates find it hard to be inspired by these picayune performances.

It is time for the forces of good to shed the banality and put forth a true pièce de résistance. They do not need to start lining red state borders with razor wire, but they do need to start ‘showing’ and stop telling, to start invoking emotion not just intellect. In another article, I offered some suggestions about how to start doing that.

The electorate, likewise, needs to wake up and start making demands. We need to light a fire beneath the kindling of political lethargy. The alternative is to sit back and be overrun by fundamentalist idiots who want to live in a New Salem of their creation, while the rest of us watch the world burn beneath the weight of their moral corruption and hostility.

I once interviewed a suspect in a corruption case who told me that a person’s morals make no difference in politics. “If you don’t play the game, you lose,” he said. The game these days is truly one of good versus evil, but good is not only not winning, it is not even playing.

Robert Vanwey was Senior Technical Analyst for the New York State Division of Criminal Justice, who specialized in investigating public corruption, technology and financial crime. He also has a Juris Doctor and Master degree in history.

Be sure to check out Just Say We Won, his detailed narrative of Trump’s attempted soft coup to overthrow the United States of America, and According to Trump, Any President can do Anything, Including Kill You, a careful analysis of Trump’s immunity arguments made before the Supreme Court. Or check out the Evidence Files Substack for an exploration into technology, science, aviation, and the Himalayas, where Rob frequently lives and works.