With the Republican Party primary debates, the 2024 U.S. presidential election is now underway.  Right out of the gate, like 2020 and 2022, American moderates and conservatives are living up to the low expectations they set for themselves.  Let's start at the top, with Donald J. Trump, the putative frontrunner for Republicans.

Put aside for a moment the overkill indictments produced by several partisan municipal, state, and federal agencies.  Clearly, the Deep State, right and left, is not going to leave Donald Trump's fate up to the electorate in 2024.  There's not much Trump can do about the legal blitz except play expensive defense and hope for less political bias in appellate or even Supreme Court reviews.

Beyond legal peril, team Trump is screwing the pooch in other venues.  Trumpsters in particular and Republicans in general have abandoned sympathetic, or reasonably fair, social platforms like Twitter.  

Subsequently, team Biden jumped into that Twitter vacuum with a blizzard of daily postings from White House, congressional, and DNC accounts.  "Bidenomics" propaganda is now a daily mantra on Twitter and other platforms.

Republican responses are scarce to invisible so far on a platform that caters to the media and 450 million users worldwide.  Personal pique and ego are now handicaps in cyberspace, where information battles are won and lost.  Unchallenged repetition is the mother of belief.

The American Democrat party is funding a full court online propaganda press.

Trump's Twitter surrender is also compounded by personal pique.  Trump skipped the first Republican primary debate for a Tucker Carlson sit-down.  All well and good if you believe that poking FOX, the RNC, and potential allies in the eye on the same night is a good tactic.

Political campaigns are won with a consistent strategy, not revenge politics.

Trump gains nothing by imitating Brandon's "no debate" dodge.  Most folks are looking for something to vote for, not someone to vote against.  Revenge may be a comfort, but it's not really a strategy.

Although nominally a Republican, Trump is uncomfortable with the nomenklatura of both major political parties.  Elected Republican leaders in Congress and the Republican National Committee

are lukewarm about another Trump run at the White House.  Trump is handicapped too by a flaccid troika at the helm in the Senate, the House, and RNC.  McConnell, McCarthy, and McDaniel, the three Macs, are at best symptoms of the mediocrity, listlessness, and venality that characterize the tenured "business as usual" class inside the Beltway.

Democrats control the federal government in the District of Columbia and in urban centers because they control the unelected apparatchiks who run day-to-day operations of government, national and metropolitan, where it matters — especially police, prosecutors, and jurists.  Even at the Pentagon, the military and national security communities are reliable Democrat sinecures.

Military services now fund genital mutilation for new recruits and veteran troops.  You can join the military today and get a college degree and a fake penis or vagina — all funded with your taxes.  Proof enough?

The Deep State, the DIE state, and the woke state, such as they are, run the show countrywide.  Wax eloquent about freedom and democracy if you must, but everyday political reality of 2023 America is a Davos model, a "progressive" political and cultural monoculture.

The great irony of American politics today is that it really doesn't matter who runs for elected federal office.  When the rhetorical smoke clears, the globalist American left will still be in charge where it matters and in a position to sabotage any elected official, especially presidential reformers.  Adding insult to inequity, regime change has been retooled for domestic use by the U.S. Intelligence Community.

It works.  Just ask Donald Trump.

Ironically, Joseph Robinette Biden is arguably the worst father, worst grandfather, and most corrupt president in American or any country's history.  Yet as a Democrat, he abides with impunity.

With all his vanity and posturing, Biden is a Bethany Beach buffoon with no shame and even less integrity.  Influence-peddlers, gender-benders, and coke-sniffers at the White House, are now just part of the Washington and Biden-era political pastiche.

Influence-peddling and corruption are both endemic and untouchable.  The Bidens are above the law because the Deep State, the permanent state is controlled by the one party beyond the law.  Our partisan apparatchiks are the law.

Alas, you will hear the "few bad apples" defense — a rationale used, ironically, by apologists from both political parties.  The argument concedes that there may be a few bad actors at the top but then quickly claims that the "rank and file" at the FBI, Justice, the DOD, or the Intelligence Community are all solid, hardworking impartial patriots.

The "bad apple" excuse is just that: an excuse.  The rot in Washington is systemic, top to bottom, in both parties; it's the very reason both parties can agree that Trump is a menace.  Trump threatens the apples, the barrel, and the whole American apple cart.

"Bye, bye American pie," indeed.

The truth about federal and municipal government today is that its function is to make spare parts for itself.  Getting elected, like a teaching job at a public school, means permanent tenure.  The name of the game inside Washington and out in urban America is the same: business as usual.

But let's be honest: there is a silver lining around all that cynical reality.  Americans love to be entertained — amused, fat, happy, often obese, stoned, drunk, licentious, and morally superior, all at the same time, individually and collectively.  Elections, then, like all excess and pornography, serve as a kind of social theater.

When we can't get what we want, we have learned to be content with what we can get.  If nothing else, the American electoral charade is always amusing and sometimes satisfying.

A presidential election may not be the real deal or democratic anymore, but the pageant and theater are probably as good as it gets these days.

G. Murphy Donovan writes about the politics of national security. Appearing daily now on Twitter/X at G. Murphy Donovan (@GMurphyDonovan1).

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