Remember back in the day how liberals were ragging us about The Double Standard? I think it had something to do with women being judged more harshly about sex.

But now we have liberals driving a coach and horses, or at least a brigade of electric cars, through the Gate of Investigative Double Standards. Yet I don’t think that a single liberal has noticed this.

For blaring at us, like loudspeakers on the street in La Habana or Pyongyang, is the fact that the investigation of Hillary Clinton’s emails was handled with velvet gloves. Oh dear, poor Hillary didn’t know what “(C)” meant on a government document. Poor little diddums. Well, really, how can you expect a woman to understand the very mansplaining details of classified document protocol after the “woe” of millennia living under the Patriarchy?

But Trump. Hoo boy. Let’s teach that punk a lesson.

But why? Here’s a poor innocent reality show host -- doesn’t know anything about the craft of politics and the need for highly evolved educated people credentialed up the ying-yang to develop policy options – really, we wise heads should give him a bit of slack.

I mean, the chap was bound to get himself tangled up with the perfidious Russians; what can you expect from a loudmouth from Queens? Why not a word to the wise -- there must have been some guy on the Trump campaign with an Ivy League degree -- and get the guy out of trouble before it’s too late. After all, he doesn’t have a hope of winning.

But no! Send for the proctologists! Get the Brits involved! The Aussie ambassador! Turn ordinary opposition research into an intelligence product! Check the documents of all the Trumpkins, searching for any undotted “i”s and uncrossed “t”s. Send his smarmy convention manager to jail while awaiting trial on alleged crimes committed a decade ago. Turn the heat on his personal lawyer!

If that isn’t a Double Standard then I wasn’t born yesterday.

You can see the glimmerings of enlightenment flickering in the minds of our sharper liberal friends as they explain away the IG report on the investigation of the FBI investigation of Hillary Clinton’s emails. Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-NY) has recently informed us that

At the end of the day, the actions reviewed in this report helped Donald Trump win the election, not the other way around.

No kidding, Chuck. So where were you and the smart guys when there was still time to stop the disaster?

I’d say that if the Obama administration had played it straight all down the line, so that Hillary Clinton would not have even tried to set up her foolish private email system, then there might be a Democratic president today. Or if Obama had put out a quiet word to Hillary Clinton that this email thing was electoral poison and we were going 100 percent for Joe Biden. Or, again, if President Obama had sent the word down that the investigation of Hillary email server should be done right by the book. Or if James Comey actually had a pair and had refused to skew the email investigation to let Hillary off the hook.

I understand, Chuck. You were prudently staying out of it, because a chap in your position back then didn’t mess with President Obama and didn’t mess with the Clinton syndicate if he didn’t want a horse’s head showing up in his bed.

And so the cascade of bureaucratic Double Standards ended in last week’s disaster of an IG report.

Speaking of cascades: when I was training as a private pilot, we were taught that your average aviation accident was seldom the result of a single failure, but almost always a cascade of failures.

All you deep-state chaps needed to do was to play it straight: no Double Standards like in the bad old days of the patriarchy. Because we are the Enlightened Ones. Because it’s not Who We Are.

The worst thing a ruling class can do is to pat itself on the back and say “we are on the right side of history,” or “we are allowing the arc of history to bend towards justice.”

Correction. The worst thing a ruling class can do is believe its own talking points.

Hey, Deep State: you are a governing elite, and government is force. Instead of making lame excuses and blaming the messenger you should instead be thinking every morning about what head of rebellion might be triggered by your vote-buying programs of forced spending and the simple robbery of your forced taxation.

And you would be cracking down on your bureaucratic FBIs and intelligence communities to let them know you demanded they do their job for the American people instead of using their offices for personal vendettas and sucking up to Mr. Big.

But why can’t you geniuses see a Double Standard when it is staring you in the face?

Christopher Chantrill @chrischantrill runs the go-to site on US government finances, usgovernmentspending.com. Also get his American Manifesto and his Road to the Middle Class.