THE COLUMN: Can We Handle the Truth?

Like it or hate it, one of the upsides of the second Trump administration is the way in which it has forced everyone (except, of course, the remnants of the legacy media) to reconsider the unexamined premises of life in these United States, and with it comes the dawning realization that things we once simply accepted as true perhaps are not. After eight long years of "resistance" against the duly elected government of the United States, the country is finally awakening from its poisoned inertia and seeing things as they are.  In fact, now the enemy has done of the courtesy of naming himself: the legal profession.  The Resistance 2.0 is now being fought by white-shoe law firms in the halls of justice and Congress, its Lilliputian hordes attempting to hamstring Donald Trump's second term -- not in the streets and with a phantom electorate, as they did the last time -- but in the courtroom. Call it by its name: lawfare.

Starring in the "Resistance" remake are legions of lawyers, dark pestilential princes of the Credentialed Class, who like Mr. Peacham in The Beggar's Opera (1728), work both for rogues and against them, and profit either way. It doesn't matter whether these bookies are conservative or liberal: their first allegiance is to the System that gave them birth and provides them with shelter, clothing, and a great deal of money. "Everyone is entitled to his day in court," they shout, waving writs and injunctions and subpoenas and arguments, not caring a fig that most Americans pray to heaven never to fall into their clutches, to be beggared by their selfless and noble high-mindedness. "We can make the argument that..." are six of the most frightening words in the English language, a prescription which taken to its logical conclusion amounts to personal and cultural penury and suicide. Any sane society would bar them from public office.

And so Americans, having ordered the Code Red with the second election of Trump, now find themselves in the position of Col. Jessep in A Few Good Men, defending themselves against the pettifogging of lawyers and full-medal JAGoffs determined to bring him down:

Unlike their 18th-century counterparts, though, American lawyers have taken their racket to new heights: they argue both sides of the law, then far too often, run for office as a legislator, House member, or Senator, where they can write the very laws that give them permanent, very remunerative employment. With luck, the updraft from this stinking cesspool of congenital corruption can waft them into the White House, the most recent example of which is the talentless, very probably criminal Joseph Robinette Biden, Jr., a man of whom it can be said that he never once worked an honest day in his life, nor earned an honest dollar.

So insidious and unrelenting has been the Leftist encroachment upon our basic civil liberties that only lately are we starting to understand that the America we thought we knew is on the verge of -- perfectly legal! -- dissolution.  We now know that untrammeled immigration -- once considered a patriotic mainstay of American exceptionalism -- may have been pushed past the tipping point by a Marxist criminal organization masquerading as a political party under the "leadership" of Barack Obama and Joe Biden with malice aforethought. We see that "birthright citizenship" is nowhere to be found in the Constitution, and neither is "judicial review," and that both concepts need a thorough public airing. We might dare to think that Supreme Court justices may in fact not have lifetime tenure and only hold unelected office by "good behavior," which remains to be satisfactorily defined -- by the people, not by other lawyers.

Most important, Americans now wonder why a single federal judge (a creature of Congress) should be able to enjoin the President of the United States (for whom he works), from carrying out the Executive's constitutionally enumerated duties and powers, especially his role as commander-in-chief of the armed forces; and that "due process" does not entitle anyone -- much less illegal aliens -- to free access to the American legal system forever. That, in short, behind that curtain over there in the corner is a little man in a wizard costume pulling the levers of reality who had us nearly convinced that the Constitution is, in fact, a suicide pact.

He -- Obama, Biden, whoever comes next -- is abetted in his sorcery by the Corporate Media, men and women who once fancied themselves responsible guardians of the Republic now transformed by ideology and education into guardians of "our democracy," by which they mean the federal bureaucracy at whose teats they suckle even as their business model collapses all around them, leaving them stunned, unemployable, and very angry.

What a nightmare.

Donald Trump's first term caught everyone temporarily off guard; Hillary Clinton, it was assumed, was a sure thing. When she failed, the Democrats, at her command, quickly rallied to unleash the "Resistance." In short order came the "Russian collusion" hoax (a Hail Mary pass eagerly disseminated by the media), the trumped-up defenestration of National Security Adviser Michael Flynn, and the exit of campaign manager Steve Bannon later in the first year. The series of unforced errors didn't prevent Trump from righting the economy and pursuing a vigorous America First foreign policy even in the teeth of withering media scorn, but by the time of the orchestrated George Floyd riots, spearheaded by the Democrat's shock troops of Antifa and, finally, the Covid hoax left Trump weakened and bloodied as he headed into the re-election campaign. Miraculously, some seven  million or so phantom Biden voters were conjured out of the ether, marked their ballots, and then vanished into thin air (never to return).

Now the battlefield is even more to the Left's liking. They've always preferred to win in the courts -- where, at the top, all they need is one tie-breaking vote to have their way with the country -- rather than the ballot boxes or even the streets, where millions of armed and angry Kyle Rittenhouses could make short work of Antifa if it came to that. They've applied one of their old favorites, the Cloward-Piven strategy, at the federal course level, demanding "due process" for "Maryland men" who deserve only jail or a flight to El Salvador, demanding lifetime employment for their federally unionized drones, challenging nearly every Trump executive order so as to tie the administration up in court at least until the 2026 congressional elections, or even to 2028.

It's guerilla lawfare at its deadliest, waged under the false flag of "restoring norms" when by norms they mean simply: their way. They're hoping for a provocation that will force Trump into a Jessep-like confrontation with the Tom Cruise character, perhaps played by Chief Justice Roberts himself, in which Trump will openly thumb his nose at the Court and its minions and thus trigger the "constitutional crisis" the Left is trying so hard to provoke.

They have, they say, a "higher loyalty"; we are nation of laws, not men. But what they really mean is that their "higher loyalty" is not to the country or the constitution but to themselves and their guild, and that the laws of this nation are to be written, litigated, and enforced not by its citizens but by lawyers. Our duty is to explain to them by any means necessary that they're wrong. And for that we'll need more than a few good men.