The Old Order Returns
January 20, 2021 By Ben Domenech
The central question Americans ought to consider on this Inauguration Day as The Old Order returns is whether what they are seeing in their country is happening because it is strong or because it is weak.
On its face, a capital city packed with a military presence — an occupation hailed by the media, as the swamp protects itself — may seem like a show of force, a reiteration of law and order above all else. As Chris Bedford writes this morning, all that needed to happen for Tom Cotton’s idea to become reality was for the seat of the powerful to be attacked instead of the neighborhoods in Kenosha. Had the federal government and the Department of Justice been willing to do what Donald Trump wanted them to do this summer, perhaps people would’ve learned earlier that rioting does not pay. But that’s not what they learned, and for good reason.
Wiser observers will understand that a capital city in need of such an overwhelming military presence — if only for the mental and emotional stability of the so-called leaders who inhabit it — also indicates a vast maw of weakness. The frail leadership of the United States is the great unremarked phenomenon of this moment. In this moment of crisis, we have what appears to be the most elderly class of political elites in the history of the nation. The octogenarian and septuagenarian set of Joe Biden, Nancy Pelosi, Steny Hoyer, Jim Clyburn, Chuck Schumer, Mitch McConnell, Dick Durbin are white knuckling it to the end of their careers — attempting to make their mark before leaving the stage and passing things on to people who share none of their memories of the time before.
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https://thefederalist.com/2021/01/20/the-old-order-returns/
