The big takeaway from Impeachment Theater is that American voters have influence over a much smaller portion of the federal government than they believed. Washington is a feudal bureaucratic empire with a small suggestion box.
Last week American voters were introduced to the idea that the elected President of the United States can be accused of "undermining" foreign policy determined by the permanent bureaucracy, which spends billions of our tax dollars but is not even slightly interested in our input.
We've been told top bureaucrats who supposedly serve at the pleasure of the president are actually entitled to their jobs and firing them is a crime, with the president presumed guilty unless he can prove he had an acceptable reason for terminating or reassigning them.
We've learned that Made Men of the bureaucratic empire and its political wing, the Democrat Party, cannot be investigated for corruption unless the most exquisite preliminary rituals are followed and the investigators can demonstrate the absolute purity of their intentions.
Outside of Impeachment Theater, we've been told it's heroic for the bureaucracy to organize "resistance" against the elected president and congressional representatives, if the Washington empire disapproves of the voters' choices.
We've discovered obscure lower-court judges can hijack entire segments of national policy on a whim. Some of these imperial proclamations have been expressly premised on the notion that American citizens have less to say about their own government than foreign nationals do.
We've learned a president the imperial bureaucracy likes can issue executive orders that cannot be reversed by presidents it disapproves of. The people are belatedly informed that some matters are settled forever on the "one man, one vote, one time" principle.
The essence of self-government, the true right that matters above all others, is the right to say "no." We've learned over the past three years that the American people no longer have that right in most cases, but their nominal employees in the federal government do.
If the imperial bureaucracy makes a demand of you, good luck with trying to work up a "resistance" movement. Good luck getting any favorable attention from the media that has fused with that bureaucracy and enjoys a revolving door of employment with it.
But if you, the Little People, cast votes the imperial bureaucracy doesn't like... well, watch out. They'll fight you every step of the way and spend untold millions of YOUR dollars against you. Then they'll get in front of cameras and expect you to applaud them as heroes.
It was always a swindle to convince the American people that democracy serves as a failsafe check against authoritarian power. We were fooled into thinking our government could never become dictatorial, no matter how much power it claims, because we can always vote the bums out.
Guess what, kids? "Voting the bums out" turns out to be nearly impossible in any significant sense, because they can use their vast resources of money, power, and media to create defensive phalanxes of rock-solid voters. They can give you billions of reasons not to vote them out.
And as we've seen since 2017, even if you DO manage to vote the bums out, or vote in an administration that disagrees with the imperial consensus, you learn that most of the power and money is controlled by people you never get to vote against.
You learn that the people you don't vote for are very capable of defending their privileges against the people who DO have to face the voters. And you learn that far more issues than you ever suspected are considered "settled" so you'll never get to vote on them again. /end
