The Party of Misgovernment

By Michael Brendan Dougherty

Monday, September 27, 2021

 

Not long ago the Democrats flattered themselves as “the party of government.” The implication was that Democrats, because they believed in using the government, were naturally more capable of manning the actual beast itself. Although it was never implied directly, you could add the fact that because most of the many millions who work for the executive branch are themselves Democrats in sentiment and orientation, Democrats would be more natural leaders. And, to be perfectly honest, there was at least a little credibility to the claim, once we saw Donald Trump in office and saw how elected and unelected Democrats were able to work with their friends in the intelligence community and other parts of the government to frustrate and even outright block Trump. His secretary of energy, for instance, once vowed to abolish the Department of Energy. Or, at least he tried to vow as much.

 

So now that Democrats are in charge, are things running smoothly? Well, not exactly. Let’s consider Afghanistan and our southern border. It’s here that we begin to understand what they mean by government.

 

Having taken whichever Afghan was closest to the departing plane — no need to vet them, or check to see whether they had, in fact, offered help and were interpreters — we have now brought a few obvious criminals to America. Very few of the 124,000 Afghan evacuees we got were on the priority list, and Bloomberg immediately reported that a number of them seemed to be coming with child brides. Now we are getting more specific info about one evacuee who is alleged by the FBI to have sexually assaulted two children at Fort McHenry. At Fort Bliss, a female U.S. soldier has also reported a sexual assault by Afghan evacuees. Hadn’t these new Americans read the news the past five years? You don’t commit your sex crime at a military fort right away. You wait until New Year’s parties.

 

While it was ongoing, this evacuation was deemed a massively enormous success by part of government, which bragged about “the largest airlift in U.S. history.” I guess that’s one way of trying to shine up the worst military humiliation in most of our lives, one in which Joe Biden extended the deadline for our withdrawal several months, allowing the Afghan national government more time to collapse and the Taliban more time to advance and make the whole thing look worse and create what is virtually a hostage situation.

 

Not a single planner at the Pentagon or senior military person has been fired or disgraced about the foul-ups at the airport, or the 20-year failed mission. Not one!

 

Now let’s look at another panicked exit. The migrant encampment at the bridge in Del Rio, Texas, has been cleared. Secretary of Homeland Security Alejandro Mayorkas has admitted that the government has transferred to the interior of the country more than 12,000 Haitians who have arrived in a human wave at Del Rio. Think they all have court dates? Think again. HHS is too backed up with the child brides to follow up. About 2,000 others were deported. This is a strong signal to tens of thousands of other Haitians who may want to move forward with their plans to emigrate to the U.S. on foot from Panama, Peru, and Columbia.

 

So has anyone at Border Patrol or HHS been fired for releasing well over 10,000 illegal aliens into the country without court dates or follow-ups? Without even the COVID testing that will be required of every American or visa holder who enters this country legally? No, of course not. Instead, they are investigating and disgracing the Border Patrol agents whom we have paid to enforce our laws.

 

The Department of Homeland Security has launched an investigation of the few Border Patrol agents who were photographed while they were on horseback and holding the reins. Coastal media falsely declared that the reins were whips. And even though they were not — even though the video of these events never showed a Border Patrol officer using the reins as whips, President Biden vowed, “I promise you those people will pay,” adding that there would be “an investigation under way now, and there will be consequences.” How could he possibly know that there will be consequences before an investigation has gathered the facts — the facts that are apparent to anyone who watched the whole video? Who needs them? The vice president already has said that the incident evoked “times of slavery.”

 

Bringing criminals into the country — that’s commendable. Trying to keep any out, according to our laws — that’s something for which you’ll pay. Now wouldn’t a party of government understand that there might be recruitment problems when Border Patrol agents are publicly tongue-lashed by the president, based on a lie? Wouldn’t a party of government understand that failing to investigate and disgrace the military personnel overseeing the spectacularly failed Afghanistan withdrawal would disincentivize competent leadership in the future?

 

My worry is that our leaders do know this and don’t care. My worry is that the real party of government is the media. The media wanted to cheerlead the airlift and the evacuees, so criticism of the Biden admin’s botch of a withdrawal has now been muted. And the media are against the idea of borders, so they can’t get too honest about the human wreckage resulting from their campaign to dissolve them.