I return to a theme of Aristotle’s, the “few v the many’ which was his characterisation of Classical Athenian democracy. The few- establishment oligarchs- and he many of the demos he saw in regular conflict. US politics as the 2020 election is also about the few and the many. Hillary Clinton in the 2016 election made her views on the many known in her unabashed ‘Basket of Deplorables” comment.

Presently, the few are seen in the liberal establishment of the insider ‘corruptocrats” of the DC Swamp, and the woke MSM-Big Tech, along with academia and Hollywood. The liberal establishment seems to be set against the ‘outsider’ derided many. Chantel Delsol has talked about the hate that the few has for the many. The disparaged “forgotten men and women” (of Sumner not FDR) are the working and middle classes who pay their taxes.

Dan Bongino is his podcast (EP1378 on 26/10/2020 @ c 60 mins) deftly deploys, and with great irony, critical theory to make a ‘few and many’ point. He says there are two overarching narratives in the USA.

First, the leftists narrative holds under the oppressor/oppressed narrative of critical theory, with a heavy doses of anti-capitalist Marxism, I might add, and with pre-selected oppressed, and that they are oppressed fighting against it- and it seems at all costs-justifying riots etc. is a just cause.

Secondly, the right’s narrative, in the face of riots and protests, is that the election poses a ‘choice between civilisation and chaos. Conservatives wish to conserve “a civilised society with established rules and law and order.”

As an aside as to why the latter is important, Niall Ferguson has said in his two books, The Great Degeneration and in Civilisation, that the rule of law is a critical feature of the West’s success as a civilisation. The degradation of the rule of law in the US is manifest in the cases I have previously written about: Concorde, Flynn and Bridgegate by a Obama Administration’s weaponised DoJ and FBI.

Mr Bongino has in a sense reprised Aristotle’s >i>the few v the many and pin pointed what the many believe, which the few decry because they are about optics. The electorate is not stupid nor to be taken for granted as is seen as African American and Latino votes move to Trump.

Further, the few v the many is seen in this election has people either voting for Trump or against him. One commentator says that is how this election should be viewed because there is no enthusiasm for - ‘the water diluted vanilla’ -Mr Biden. That is clearly evidenced in Mr Biden’s poor audience numbers which are pitifully low with one in Arizona where no one showed up and in others were there is mere handful or so. Tump in comparison has lively and well attended campaign venues and as has been pointed out in LA and Miami when he was not even there he had a big turn out that Mr Biden could only wish for. Sky News Australia to its credit has reported on this aspect.

Substance and reality trumps optics and abstractions. Steve Hilton a UK commentator on Fox, puts it that Trump is energy, action and achievements (employment, foreign affairs, and Amy Coney Barrett’s deserved appointment to SCOTUS today) barely get a mention in our MSM unless allied to derision. Biden is for more lock downs, ending the fossil fuel industry, repealing Trump’s tax cuts which help lower income earners is, as Hilton says for “depression” and being “comatose”. There is ‘can do’ here. It is predicted that 10 million –at minimum-will be unemployed in the oil industry alone and destroying the oil and gas industry will come with higher costs across the entire economic board. It is a strategic necessity to be self-sufficient in energy. As one New Mexico Democrat candidate has put it these people do not have their feet on the ground of reality.

In some ways the issue of the few v the many is accompanied by a contest between optics and substance. Of Obama’s messiah-like speeches, Hilton says that he ‘sounds smart, looks cool’. No one can doubt Obama’s fluency as he waffles on in abstractions and generalities he sound persuasive but it is “superficial snobbery.”
We hear so often the call from progressives for “conversations.” The liberal establishment in the US likes “conversations” these are substitutes for action. A good example is that papers were written about pandemic supplies but the Obama administration did not get into action over it.

Our PM is not above resorting to that expression and did so, for example, over an Official Information Act 1995 request. “We will have/we need to have a conversation…” is the patios of the progressive. It might actually mean a dictate. Talk in this instance was neither activity nor achievement in basic compliance. It is noteworthy that the Human Rights Commission and the MoJ were not interested in “conversations” on the proposed hate speech legislation, but Gree MP Golriz Ghahraman to her credit was!
Activity and achievement are the cornerstone of substance, optics and talk are not. People who are hungry know that it is not an abstraction that can be fixed by optics and brand management.

Hilton further argues that MSM and Big Tech is an ‘alliance of bias’, rather than helping to inform peoples’ opinion, it has instilled a rebellion against it as people do not like being duped and the truth is important. That rebellion has been further aggravated by Face Book’s and Twitter’s censoring the Hunter Biden lap top and Biden family corruption allegations which points to national security risks, and on top of that MSM bias has pedalled Russian disinformation, which was shot down by the DNI, FBI and DoJ. Then, like a carpet bag provincial criminal lawyer, it has sought another broken defence reed, of “unverified” but that has been hit out of the park by the computer shop’s receipt, Hunter Biden’s lawyer asking for the lap top and now the business associates of Hunter Biden saying it is true. The optic then becomes, when counter spin fails, “don’t cover it at all’- that is to hide it which is deceit by omission, takiyya and an untruth.

But substance- truth- has won out. Trump has a knack for hitting on substance and action. His question to the Ukrainian PM now looks very prescient indeed.
The many, the outsiders, see the caste like few of the liberal establishment’s matrix of interconnected interests, conflicts of interest, biases, lies, and privilege arraigned against the substance of the constitution and its safeguards and them.

If we move past the MSM optics- ‘Trump’s is vile’, ‘uncouth’ ‘doesn’t follow our forms and manners’- but for the scorn and ridicule, we are not at Versailles in the reign of Louis XIV or at the Wellington Club for lunch- Trump’s Tweets- to the substance then we see what is really at issue in 2020 and why Trump has the support he does. The many deal with substance in their daily lives; the many have common sense and won’t be fooled by optics; and the many are governed by consent not by imposition through the circumvention of the democratic process,or by the manipulation of the Supreme Court.