Useful idiots are, well, useful.  Uncle Joe Biden has plenty.  What are they up to?  And what will they deliver?

With the US Presidential election still in dispute, with legal challenges based on credible (if so far circumstantial) evidence of systematic voter fraud, tightening races in states where counting continues, and evidence of uneasy narrative building going on across the left liberal ruling class, there are two conclusions to be drawn.  One, the 2020 election is not over, bar the massive shouting going on.  And two, we are witnessing the strange spectacle of those who should be supporting the President and his agenda either going to water, or worse, collaborating with the Biden campaign in an attempt to – what, exactly?

Was the election a fraud, and is there a real chance of overturning the result?  The creator of Dilbert, Scott Adams puts it out there:

One of these things is true: Either Trump is irrationally clinging to hope or he has seen more than the public has so far seen about election fraud and he is letting the press hang itself before revealing it.

We know that Trump is no one’s fool, and that he is not likely to waste a moment’s effort on a dead duck.  So the plausible hypothesis is that he smells a giant rodent and intends to do justice to pursuing the stench with vigour.  Who can blame him?  Well, many can, and have.

The news keeps coming in that re-confirms the tightness of the race and Trump’s monumental achievement at this election.  The President is gaining considerably in Arizona, with enough votes still to be counted to provide him with a slim chance of winning there.  Arizona is not over.  He has just won North Carolina, placing another fifteen electoral college votes in the Trump column.

Currently people are still taking the odds of 17 to 1 that Trump will win the election.  In a two horse race that is still going, in the absence of a concession, and may well simply be a repeat of Bush v Gore in 2000, these might be seen as attractive odds.  No hanging chads here, but the Supreme Court will be in play.  With two veterans of the 2000 campaign, by the names of Kavanaugh and Coney Barrett, now employed in other, more critical jobs.

Rudy Giuliani, on the Trump legal team, has noted:

Possibly 900,000 Illegal Ballots Were Cast in Pennsylvania, Enough to Flip to Trump.

The stories of voting malpractice are almost too numerous and serious to list.  They are legion and credible.

And yet …

The corporate media, mostly Never Trumpers of the first order, simply “called” the election for Biden in states where counting at the time was incomplete, to say the least of it, then “called” the whole election for Biden.  Eager to get on with writing the first draft of history, they have attempted the bed down the following narrative:

• Biden won the election fair and square fair and square;
• Biden got more votes than any candidate in history;
• Biden will unify the country;
• Biden should be allowed a smooth transition to inauguration, ergo Trump should both concede AND give up his legal challenges;
• Trump is contesting the election because he is a narcissist and a sore loser, not because he thinks democracy has not been served by the 2020 electoral process.

This is the narrative that Team Biden wants to become the story.  Who is helping them, and why?  No doubt there are a number of reasons offered for wishing to just “move on”.  One of them is the utterly naïve view that democracy is a clean fight and the winners should be accepted, in peace.  That we are not engaged in a war of great significance, with unimaginable stakes. 

There are both ideologues and midwits aplenty involved in this current affair.

Every political movement, every ideology, has its masterminds, its field operatives, its fellow travellers and its useful idiots.  The latter term, perhaps first used by Lenin – or at least attributed to him; perhaps it was concocted by the decidedly non-marxian Austrian economist Ludwig von Mises – describes those who inadvertently, by their actions or inactions, aid an ideology or political movement that they may or may not believe in.  Alternate terms are “useful fools” and “useful innocents”.

https://quoteinvestigator.com/2019/08/22/useful-idiot/

Whoever first used the term is hardly important.  The point is that Lenin believed in it and deployed the strategy.  Lenin’s own useful idiots referred to Western Marxists and social democrats who provided cover for him and his successors, especially Stalin.  They included journalists and academics who defended the Soviet Union for decades after whistle blowers like Malcolm Muggeridge had revealed the horrors of that regime.  They performed useful, deluded fifth column service to the survival of an evil empire, driven by ideology.

Well, Joe Biden has his own band of useful idiots (BUIs) attempting to embed the narrative described above.  And so of them are not people you would have expected to be BUIs.  The huge difference this time is that Biden’s useful idiots include those for whom Biden and his agenda are supposedly anathema, and wouldn’t normally align with him in a month of Sundays.  Let alone actively prosecute his case.  Endorse his almost delivered coup.  By every account, these people should loathe Biden and all that he stands for.  Instead, they are determined to wave him through and ensure a smooth transition to office.  After which he will set out with lethal intent to slaughter everything they support and believe in.  Go figure.

Let’s see who they include:

• Never Trumpers .  These were a bunch of establishment conservatives led by National Review people like Jonah Goldberg and Mona Charen, the neoconservative rump led by the sad, intellectually lost Bill Kristol, ex GW Bush Administration Trump haters like David Frum, and assorted others on the American “right”.  They always hated Trump and have been fighting him ever since he launched his quixotic campaign in 2015.  These are deeply troubled people who, quite frankly, don’t know their ideological arse (ass for our American readers) from their elbow.  As Julie Kelly documents in her timely book, Disloyal Opposition: How the NeverTrump Right Tried – and Failed – to Take Down the President, the establishment right in America sold out to the left, big time.  Kelly shows how the core NeverTrumpers accepted the big dollars of leftist Big Tech billionaires like the founder of eBay to help destroy Trump.  To destroy a man that had implemented the core tenets of everything they said they had always believed in, more completely than any of his predecessors had ever done.   Originalist judges on the Supreme Court.  Restoring decent patriotism.  Tax cuts.  Energy self-sufficiency.  Pushing back against political correctness.  Seriously pro-life.  Sane response to the Covid scare.  It is truly strange that alleged right-of-centre ideologues would prioritise the destruction of an achieving Republican President over enabling a leftist insurgency against democratic process;
• The US Catholic Bishops, who should frankly be more concerned right now with the latest chapter of the awful story of one of their previous stars, Cardinal Uncle Ted McCarrick, who buggered seminarians routinely and yet got protected and promoted in the American Church.  Yes, these extremely mediocre middle managers of the Church of Christ have decided to congratulate “Catholic” Joe Biden.  Is this a joke or something?  Biden loathes everything the Catholic Church believes in.  One now merely awaits Biden’s invite to Rome to break bread with the leftist, NeverTrumper Pope;
• George W Bush.  The Bushes, who had their go and achieved squat, have never gotten over their stoushes with Trump.  John Ellis Bush (JEB) took on Trump (hosing a cool billion or so of donor money up against the wall in the process) and emerged as a pathetic spendthrift without a card to play.  The Bush endorsement of Biden is pure spite.  If W. had actually achieved anything, other than a strange, useless war with Iraq – oh, sorry, there was Afghanistan as well – we might take more notice of him now.  He is a bitter old man now, who gets his kicks by endorsing – Joe Biden!!!  Perhaps the Bushes see a chance for a fresh tilt at the Big House in 2024;
• The Murdoch media.  Murdoch turned on Trump.  Several theories are out there.  Liberal left sons and daughters-in-law, Trump’s refusal to genuflect – and we know Rupert loves politicians to genuflect – and, perhaps Murdoch’s own quixotic ideological/commercial plays.  Whether it is his Fox News tilt to Biden in America or his Australian outlets’ general refusal to explore the realities of this American election, he is not entertaining the possibility of a coup.  He or his lieutenants clearly instructed Fox News to call states for Biden ahead of time, and neutered those who might have been expected to give the President a fair shake;
• Andrew Bolt, normally much hated by the Australian left though now seemingly a latterday Never Trumper.  Bolt is not normally one of the standard Australian “conservatives” who delight in flipping unexpectedly, like Angela Shanahan, Miranda Devine, and (especially) Greg Sheridan, the apologetic conservative from central casting who essentially just wants to be loved, and appreciated for his essential, thoughtful even-handedness.  But this time Bolt has, bizarrely, intoned that it is “not conservative to say Trump was cheated”.  What does this even mean?  Does Bolt himself know?

Let us look a little more closely at some of these strange Biden useful idiots.  Some of the more perceptive voices on the American right have questioned the ease with which establishment types who claim to be conservative have rolled over.  Joined the “Go Joe” brigade.

Paul Gottfried asks – ‘pardon my perplexity, but why should we be gracious?”

It is hard for me to understand the advice now emanating from Fox News and much of the rest of Conservatism, Inc.. These folks have gone into high gear instructing Donald Trump’s supporters to “graciously” accept Joe Biden’s presidential victory. Since we are not allowed to utter the word “fraud” to describe what has happened, are we at least permitted to refer to “irregularities”? I’m not sure that even that’s OK. 

At high noon on November 7, when Fox News anchor Chris Wallace announced his network was declaring Biden the victor in the presidential contest, he quoted Senator Mitt Romney (R-Utah), who warned the outgoing president against saying anything “inflammatory.” Presumably, noting that scores of irregularities had taken place during the election in battleground states with Democratic governors and in heavily Democratic districts would have the effect of “dividing” our country. 

On Saturday night, several Fox News pundits were mulling over the question of why Republican congressmen were not yet flooding the newly and duly elected president with notes of congratulations. Marc Theissen stepped in to explain that Trump had “frozen” this natural process, by engaging in what seemed tiresome and unnecessary litigation. Karl Rove was bubbling over with delight as he explained that Biden, in his first remarks as president-elect, appealed to “healing and unity.” NeverTrumper and Fox News “all-star” Jonah Goldberg seemed profoundly relieved to see Trump and his “juvenile attitudes” go down to defeat. And former Florida Governor Jeb Bush tried to get out ahead of the others by “praying for our new president.” 

They were embarrassed by Trump, of course.  Or, perhaps, they were embarrassed by their own do-nothing, achieve-nothing, hand-in-my-pants conservatism that was shown up by Trump, an actual achiever with actual support from the folks.  This shamed them.  They should never, though, ever have been embarrassed by Trumpism, and for this the seventy million ordinary Americans who voted for The Donald will never, I hope, forgive them.

https://amgreatness.com/2020/11/10/pardon-my-perplexity-but-why-should-we-be-gracious/

Trump’s core support was mainly from the forgotten people of America.  But not only the punters.  Julie Kelly, in her book, noted the number of top shelf intellectuals who backed Trump.  One of them was Victor Davis Hanson, one of the outstanding American minds of his generation.

VDH has observed:

NeverTrump was a loose term for lots of different Republican apostates. First, were a small cadre of self-described conservatives and doctrinaire Republicans, who under no circumstances would have ever voted for Trump or embraced his agenda, or in some extreme cases, ever voted for any who would vote Trump. 

… In the ashes of a Trump defeat, the Republican NeverTrump Phoenix bird of prey would arise with a new doctrinaire creed under sober and judicious leadership—maybe someone like a younger Romney, a wonkish clone of Paul Ryan, a rebranded and reenergized Jeb Bush—or a MAGA-veneered, reverse-engineered Marco Rubio or Nikki Haley, who now claims to be suspicious of China or wants fair rather than just free trade. 

More likely, they believe that the Trump agenda could be repudiated and replaced with a new NeverTrump “contract with America”—détente with China, an end to the Israel-Arab alliance with the Palestinians again funded by the United States at the center of all negotiations; NAFTA resurrected; the wall torn down and borders again porous, along with blanket amnesties; an end to presidential jawboning about outsourcing and offshoring; more moderate judges than polarizing jurists like Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh, and Amy Coney Barrett.

The NeverTrumpers likely never envisioned themselves in their fading moments as orphaned grifters begging for left-wing cash to play the role of useful idiots—only to be cast off by their paymasters after their inept roles have been played out—which is now their immediate fate. Yet they were never able to capture any popular constituency, largely because of their incoherence. Trump received 93 percent Republican support in some 2020 exit polls—increasing in party support the more Republican gatekeepers damned him. 

… Why exactly did they oppose all the agendas that Trump enacted that they had once sworn were their own—originalist justices, deregulation, global warming skepticism, pro-growth trade and tax reform, a beefed-up military, a pro-Israel, anti-Iran Middle East policy, more gas and oil development? 

Apparently to endorse the reification of their lifelong agendas was to concede that an unwelcome agent had skills beyond their own to push through the laws of their dreams. To paraphrase Cicero, they would rather Trump fail with their own agendas failing with him, than see him succeed enacting all that they had once demanded. 

https://amgreatness.com/2020/11/08/the-nevertrump-never-again/

The outworkings of the activities of the Biden Useful Idiots might well come back to bite the buffoons who have signed up for the “let it go Donald” brigade.  I don’t think they have the remotest idea what is at stake here.  Trump is fighting for our cultural lives.  They do not get it.  They also do not remotely understand that the world has moved on, from left v right to the people v the elites.  Trump is the only Western politician that has understood this.  Right-of-centre shills who are consumed by their own essential wisdom and who cherish their Sky News slots and Murdoch columns above all else have missed the story of the age.  They are useful idiots.

Here is Paul Gottfried again:

Perhaps our congratulators are scared that the new administration will follow Alexandria Ocasio Cortez’s exhortation, quickly seconded by neoconservative columnist Jennifer Rubin at the Washington Post, that those who openly supported Trump should be ridiculed and professionally isolated. In Germany, such a fate awaits anyone in public life who is known to have voted for the Alternative für Deutschland, the only significant non-leftist party in the German parliamentary spectrum. 

Ocasio-Cortez, Rubin, and other friends of Joe may have similar plans for dissenters in this country. And presumably the electronic media barons will be able to throw more of Joe’s critics off Facebook, Twitter, and Google. What’s to stop them, given that the guy whom they paid megabucks to elect has captured the presidency and is bringing along his leftist handlers? 

First they came for the deplorables…

Be very, very careful what you wish for.  Lionel Shriver wanted America to be “boring again”.  Vote Biden!  Hope you are happy, Lionel.  And friends.  What is about to be visited upon us will be devastating, for conservatives, for families, for Christians, for small government libertarians, for cultural restorationists, for traditionalists, does not bear thinking about.  We are about to be smashed.  But we didn’t like Trump.  Er, yuk.  This is stupidity on a scale never previously known or acknowledged.

Trump, being his own man from the start and not a creature of the Republican establishment, or of anyone else for that matter, and having as his primary supporters people regarded by the establishment as ignorant, beyond the pale, racist, homophobic and xenophobic, was always going to have a lot of people against him, from both sides of the party political aisle and certainly right across the elites.  And so it proved.  And being a cussed, aggressive character brought a whole extra swag of opponents to the table.  People who might otherwise have supported or defended “Trumpism”, but simply found the man unsupportable.

With all these forces arrayed against him, you would not think that you would need any useful idiots.  The field operatives and fellow travellers would have it covered.

And yet, into the fray the useful idiots have plunged.  And some of them noted above have been especially useful, because they include many people who might have been expected either to oppose Biden or favour Trump.  The best useful idiots of all are right-of-centre or conservative types.  They lend weight to the partisan claims of Biden’s rusted on supporters.  They seem to have a case made non reasonableness.  They seem to be buying into the fiction that democracy provides fair fights and the outcomes should always be respected by the losers.

Two big problems.  There isn’t a loser yet.  And the system did not operate fairly.   This is known by most, and acknowledged by fewer.

There is a word for the strategy of the useful idiots.  It is called “appeasement”.  We tried that in the 1930s, with outcomes with which even Blind Freddy is familiar.  That supposed conservatives like the American NeverTrumpers and Andrew Bolt in Australia apparently believe that what has just occurred in the USA is ok, is all the evidence needed that we are, as they say, stuffed.