stuff comes out, we regular people are more and more angry and disillusioned.
I mean, we all knew that “the swamp” was a horrible and nasty place. But I think most of us didn’t know how nasty it really was. Most of us keep the laws and just blindly assume that others cannot actually be that evil. To paraphrase Shakespeare, we simply assume that because we are virtuous, there will be no more cakes and ale.
In short, a cabal of partisans weaponized compromised intelligence, invented a Russian conspiracy out of nothing, and employed it to kneecap an incoming president. The deception ran so deep that even those entrusted to defend the presidency—like Bolton—became complicit by omission, not intervention.
But hopefully recent events have disabused most people of the idea that there is little actual evil in the world. Men are not angels, and that’s why the founding fathers set up the government the way they did. The idea was that each agency would seek their own interests, and in doing so would prevent other agencies from overreaching their limits.
The founding fathers were certainly more jaded and sadly wise than we are! They well understood that man was not perfectible, and that the best option was therefore to simply assume that there would be evildoers. The structure of government itself would help to put a limit on the damage that could be done, and thus they could harness self-serving behavior for the common good.
Of course, Leftism (quite unconvincingly) argues just the opposite. It argues that man will do good things without any carrots or sticks. And Leftism also argues that we are so dang smart that we can create a “heaven on earth.” Yes, Leftism is bound up with overweening pride and unreflective narcissism…
But of course, in an ironic twist, the less superficially “sunny” view of the nature of humanity, in fact, provides for a much happier existence and much less violence and evil. Because the Right is not bitterly mired in despair about the state of humanity–it just has a recognition of the truth and how to overcome the obstacles that certainly will arise.