Any consumer of political news and commentary is well advised to bear in mind that even the most trusted of broadcasters has a commercial interest in sensationalizing policy differences and portraying their ideological opponents as cartoonishly devious figures of menace. Theatrical exaggeration in political coverage is inevitable; a commentator's own partisan proclivities may color the reportage, or a commentator may be subtly (or not so subtly) pressured to pander to the political preferences of network ownership. At the very least, all are obliged to engage in the showmanship necessary to capture and hold an audience.

But sometimes an event occurs that is so significant that it defies the excesses of commercialized political exaggeration. The raid on Mar-a-Lago was such an event. With this disgraceful stunt, the FBI has in effect openly acknowledged that it is little more than a political police force willingly placed in the service of the Democratic Party with its most prominent, public-facing role being to shelter and protect the Democratic Party's own well-connected and highly-placed criminals while criminalizing and persecuting its political opponents, right down to falsely framing and entrapping them when necessary. If it isn't eventually dismantled entirely, perhaps the FBI should be renamed the FBCF -- Federal Bureau of Custom Framing.

The FBI has lost the public trust and is undeserving of the benefit of the doubt. Its partisan alignments are obvious. The FBI has proven incapable of taking any interest in the innumerable crimes of Antifa and BLM, yet simply cannot refrain from issuing dire warnings against unruly parents who dare to oppose mandated racist indoctrination at school board meetings. The FBI simply cannot be bothered to address the ongoing organized intimidation of Supreme Court justices by leftist thugs, yet shows no hesitation in branding patriotic imagery as a sign of probable alignment with domestic terrorism. The next time our intelligence services are caught with their pants down -- the next time we are hit with a 9/11-style attack from an unexpected quarter, perhaps the FBI will seek to save face and solicit public appreciation by reminding us that not a single January 6th trespasser evaded its grasp.

What makes all this so obscene is not just the spiteful gratuitousness of the Mar-a-Lago raid, but the deeper betrayal of the American experiment such made-for-television partisan stunts represent. Of course, to impugn the FBI is somewhat like condemning the misbehaving dog while failing to notice the guiding hand a little further up the leash. There are ample grounds to suspect the Democrat party's latest abuse of power is no mere episode of run-of-the-mill political viciousness, but represents something far darker. The Left's embrace of vulgarized postmodern doctrines that effectively reduce absolutely everything in life -- including culture and politics -- to the mere exercise of brute force is, undeniably, a standing warrant for the abuse of power. To the extent that the Democratic Party dedicates itself to the tenets of postmodern fascism, it commits itself on principle to the abuse of power as its sole guiding standard of political practice.

As should be evident even to those who are new to following politics, this goes far deeper than any mere policy dispute -- it is a matter of fundamental political orientation. The American system represents a framework for compromise through which disputes may be settled without resort to terror or bloodshed. The Democrats increasingly and irresponsibly reject and violate the limits of this framework and in so doing, they court disaster.

A significant component of the American political class seems to have disavowed any deeper devotion to the continuity of the constitutional structure within which they themselves ostensibly operate. The issuing of public threats against Supreme Court justices coupled with demands to pack the Court attest to the Democrats' utter contempt for the limits imposed upon them by our system of government.

And is it any wonder? What else should one expect from political activists who embrace the claim that the United States Constitution is a white supremacist manifesto whose crafting was an act of racial malice and whose wholesale repudiation would be a welcomed exercise in belated historical correction?

How many of our elected "representatives" gaze longingly upon the kind of unchallenged media control exercised by the rulers of China, and wish this kind of power were theirs as well? Civilian firearms owners across so much of the English-speaking world are effectively brutalized (in Great Britain, New Zealand, Australia, and Canada) and many of our "representatives" openly salivate at the spectacle and dream of rescinding the Second Amendment. The Democratic Party offers its increasingly hysterical base the emotional gratifications to be enjoyed in the violent (and ultimately lawless) subjugation of its designated domestic enemies. The rank hatred the Democratic Party foments against unaligned Americans is palpable, and has been for years.

The arrogance implicit in the Democratic Party's policy agenda also propels it to abuse whatever power it may come to hold. Were the Democrats granted their deepest wish, they would govern indefinitely, without opposition, and by decree on the grounds that nothing less than the exercise of total power is adequate to respond to what they claim is a permanent existential climate emergency. These would be the same desperately devoted guardians of the climate who routinely fly on private jets and choose to inhabit expansive, energy-intensive luxury mansions on exclusive ocean front properties, despite the imminent threat these frauds claim a rising ocean represents. As these professional panicmongers luxuriate in decadent splendor, we lower-borns are incessantly bullied to dial our own lives down to the expectations imposed upon us by a cabal of self-impressed, self-promoting sadistic charlatans.

It is galling to be constantly taunted, caricatured, bullied, and vilified. The urge to lash out is understandable -- but to do so unlawfully is unwise and self-defeating. One should never allow oneself to be goaded into discrediting one's own cause. And given the brazen and oafish hostility of our adversaries, we should recognize that we are not without potential -- and even unexpected -- allies. The ugliness of Democratic rule -- the naked appeals to race hatred, the pigheaded imposition of policies that amount to economic sabotage, the tragicomic spectacle of senility and incompetence in the nation's highest offices -- could well rouse the eventual resistance of the inattentive, move political independents into opposition, encourage new voters to seek an alternative, and even prompt disillusioned Democrats to cross party lines.

In the meantime, the Democratic Party's abuses impose upon us a duty to educate ourselves so as to expose and dismantle the lies that purport to justify these abuses in the interest of killing their political appeal. The Democrats, in their fanatical devotion to unlimited power geared toward impossible ends, have clumsily overreached, and we should not overreact. We must always remember that we possess the means to resist at the ballot box -- these fascists can be disempowered. The Democratic Party is an organized force of civic betrayal; their candidates deserve to be punished by being driven from office in November.

Image: Federal Arts Project