Why Trump? Let me explain it to you, New York Times

by Lev Tsitrin

From his perch at the ivory tower, Donald P. Moynihan, “professor of public policy at Georgetown and an expert on the administrative state” enlightens us in the New York Times that America’s governing bureaucracy is guided by “values like transparency, legality, honesty, due process, fealty to the Constitution and competence” — which Trump plans to upend by placing, if he wins, the political appointees “in every agency across government, including the agencies responsible for protecting the environment, regulating workplace safety, collecting taxes, determining immigration policy, maintaining safety net programs, representing American interests overseas and ensuring the impartial rule of law.”

I wish the professor knew what he was talking about — or the New York Times knew to stop its reporters and columnists when they push drivel. Unlike the professor (or the New York Times, for that matter) who are manifestly clueless, I know a great deal about “transparency, legality, honesty, due process, fealty to the Constitution and competence” in our governance structures — or rather, utter absence thereof. Replace this list of civic virtues with “crony capitalism, censorship, judicial fraud, blatant disregard of the Constitution” — and you will get much closer to the modus operandi of the powers that be.

Unlike the professor, I studied the workings of the government not at a university, but by trying to put into practice its beloved slogan of “liberty and justice for all.”

Clearly, one of the aspects of “Liberty for all” is the liberty to speak — yet the government hates it when people speak out of their own mouths without leave — and therefore, it effectively blocks author-published books from the mainstream marketplace of ideas that are the nation’s bookstores and libraries, reserving the dollars spent there for corporate publishers.

When I resorted to “justice for all” to fix this blatant crony capitalism scheme, and sued the government, instead of weighing my lawyer’s argument against that of the government’s lawyer in accordance with the rules of “due process” and “the impartial rule of law” the judges brazenly showed their partiality by concocting right in the decision — and evaluating — their own, utterly bogus one, deciding the case for their own argument.

Seeing that “justice for all” is a Kafkaesque farce, I sued judges themselves for fraud — to be told by DAs defending them that in Pierson v Ray federal judges gave themselves the right to act from the bench “maliciously and corruptly.” So where exactly do you see in this the pattern of “transparency, legality, honesty, due process, fealty to the Constitution and competence,” Professor Moynihan and the New York Times?

The academe and the press not only do not see that the reality has nothing to do of their portrayal of it — but, much worse, they deliberately refuse to look — lest they see it. I e-mailed the professor to point out that he has no clue of that he’s talking about and recommending that he learns — but got no reply. I contacted the New York Times innumerable times, writing to them, calling them, picketing their office tower — all to no avail.

Why would they bother? The life in their parallel “elite” universe is sweet indeed. They have the privilege to speak, and they make good money by doing so — so what’s amiss? Why would hillbillies enjoy the same rights — getting the same rewards? It is only right and fair that they be kept down: the good life is for the “elites”!

But this begs the obvious question: won’t those who are being held down by the swindling officialdom, resent it? Won’t they hate that arrangement, calling it names like “deep state”? Won’t they get behind someone who promises to upend the current system of brazen cronyism, and introduce “values like transparency, legality, honesty, due process, fealty to the Constitution and competence” — and, last but far from being the least, “ensuring the impartial rule of law” instead of the present-day “corrupt and malicious” judging?

The New York Times may not know it, but that kind of judging has consequences: it makes its victims seek justice elsewhere. Others have different grievances than mine, but they all are ultimately rooted in the absence of “transparency, legality, honesty, due process, fealty to the Constitution and competence” on the part of those who govern them. The press and academe refuse to listen, and fix those grievances by doing what they are supposed and expected to do — shedding the light of public scrutiny on them. And yet they are surprised by the appeal of Trump to those who plainly see the Kafkaesque reality we live in — the reality in which federal judges can claim, in the court of law, the right to be corrupt — and that court grants it to them; the reality in which journalists refuse to cover this outrage; the reality in which it is possible to claim that this grotesque violation of any norms of “due process” could be called “the impartial rule of law.”

This is bonkers, yet Professor Moynihan and the New York Times see nothing but the bad, bad, bad Trump, and the stupid hillbillies whom he fools. But we hillbillies aren’t being fooled — we just refuse to see what is not there. We do not see government’s “transparency, legality, honesty, due process, fealty to the Constitution and competence” which the professorial and journalistic “elites” tell us to see.

May be, rather than being surprised, the academics and journalists should examine the facts, and report them as they are, instead of lying to us, and to themselves? That would remove their surprise at Trump’s appeal — and for that matter, it would help remove the grievances that drive Trump’s supporters. If you want to counteract Trump, do your jobs properly, and start seeing what we see, Professor Moynihan and the New York Times.

Lev Tsitrin is the author of “Why Do Judges Act as Lawyers?: A Guide to What’s Wrong with American Law”