Jane M. Orient, M.D.
When I was an idealistic young student in junior high civics class—when we studied the Constitution, so you know it was long ago—I had the idea you should vote for the person, not the party.
Now I am older and increasingly cynical. A lot of the candidates I favored were at best disappointments—or frauds or even traitors to a cause they claimed to believe in. I came to agree with Peter Schweitzer in his book Throw Them All Out. They almost all get rich by doing things that would be a crime for you or me, such as insider trading. They almost all have a paymaster, and you can’t afford to buy them or make sure they stay bought.
On occasion, I have cast a protest vote (or thrown away my vote) for a third party, when both of the two major candidates were just too awful.
I have never stayed home, as some people advocate. There are usually propositions or small but important offices like school board or city council.
For decades, we have been moving toward government by technocracy, with major policy made by “expert” bureaucrats in agencies, supposedly above and immune to dirty politics. They can base their benevolent rules on The Science™ and not worry about public opinion.
If you like that idea, you probably do not understand how the administrative state (“Deep State”) works. It may be above the melee of electoral politics, but it is deeply immersed in and the captive of intraagency politics. That is increasingly determined by giant international corporations and global nongovernmental “nonprofit” (tax exempt) organizations (NGOs) run by Bill Gates, George Soros, and nameless other megabillionaires. And you can’t throw them out.
We need Congress to take back its power from these agencies, and for the courts to stop allowing this unconstitutional delegation of power. We must exert the only leverage we have on Congress: Voting the rascals out.
So how do we vote? I have been learning about how the legislative process has evolved. The majority party has a lock on the process, even if it has only one seat more than the minority. It controls what bills can be heard, and which ones can come to a vote. It decides what issues get committee hearings on national television, and which are Memory Holed. Minority politicians can do very little.
At present, the agenda of the U.S. Congress is set by Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer. A vote for any Democrat is a vote for them. They have a very effective method for enforcing party discipline. “Blue Dog” Democrats are a fading memory. All must bow to a Woke agenda that would have been called extremist 10 years ago.
Our Founders intended to have a system of checks and balances so that no one faction could seize control and enact radical change even if most Americans opposed it. The filibuster was one such mechanism. The ruling party would like to get rid of it entirely, and meanwhile evades it whenever possible through the budget reconciliation process. “Democracy” to an elite determined to grab power for itself means cobbling together a majority vote just once—like with Obamacare—on a massive law that is virtually impossible to undo.
From my standpoint as a physician, these are the key issues in this election:
- Medical freedom. The current regime is the party of masking; lockdowns; coerced vaccinations no matter the necessity, efficacy, or risk; and suppression of physicians’ ability to prescribe or even discuss government-disfavored treatments.
- Affordable food and energy. Based on the false quasi-scientific dogma that essential plant food (carbon dioxide) will cause catastrophic climate change, the regime is enforcing rules to halt or curtail ranching, essential agricultural activities, mining, drilling, fracking, pipelines, and transportation. The promise that wind and solar can provide adequate, reliable electricity will fail disastrously.
- Peace. The regime is signaling that we are at higher risk of nuclear war than at any time since the Cuban missile crisis—and that we will stop at nothing to get Russia out of Ukraine.
- Value of the dollar. Printing endless money to send to Ukraine, to repay student loans, or to subsidize “renewable” energy will impoverish Americans through inflation, rob savers, and possibly crash the financial system. Draining the Strategic Petroleum Reserve, or hiring $80 billion worth of armed IRS agents will not help.
To me, this election seems to be a referendum on whether we should “stay the course” over the cliff to government-dictated medicine, food and energy rationing, war, and depression—or stop, look, and listen. Choose your party wisely.
