Dear liberals, progressives, and other big-government types:

You’ll have to take my word for this, but I’m nowhere near the highest degree of cynicism, paranoia, and anti-establishment on the political right.  Think of it this way:  If the society of politics is a dinner party, I’m a only step removed from right-of center types who try to pass among you, but there are loiters in the hall, down the stairs, in the yard, in the street, and even way across the country.  I used to linger by the coat rack, just within the outer orbit of the server making the rounds with trays of hors d’oeuvres, but now I mainly stand in the open entrance door smirking.

I provide this framing because I think you really need to pause a moment and reevaluate what you’re willing to tolerate from people on your own side.  This is true at every level of government — statewide, think the lack of vetting from the Commerce Corp. and Speaker Mattiello’s too-laughable-to-laugh attempt to pin 38 Studios on his Republican opponent following a parade of corruption-related exits by the Democrat’s legislative peers — but it’s clearer at the federal level.  Nationally, too, you’ll have to consider people on my side of issues who actually control governments and/or are much more, let’s say, militarized than one tends to find in Rhode Island.

So, focusing federally, here are a few objects that I’ll just place before you for consideration.

First, John Schindler writes about the risk of our now-obviously corrupted FBI:

For the sake of our democracy, we need our secret police force to be non-partisan and willing to investigate corrupt politicians regardless of party affiliation. Whoever the next director is, that person will need to clean partisan hacks out of the FBI with vigor while restoring a sense of mission that does not kowtow to the ruling party in Washington. Here a bit of Hoover’s annoying obsession with minute details would be a godsend.

Want the latest indication of this corruption?  Here it is:

Buried in the 189 pages of heavily redacted FBI witness interviews from the Hillary Clinton email investigation are details of yet another mystery — about two missing “bankers boxes” filled with the former secretary of state’s emails.

Oops.  And speaking of oopses John Fund touches on a topic that’s been generating a great deal of skepticism on the right:

… incidents in states from Virginia to Pennsylvania to New York show that too many election officials are ignoring or even covering up the systemic problems brought to their attention. One way not to find something is simply not to look.

According to a 2012 Pew Research Center survey, one out of eight American voter registrations is inaccurate, out-of-date, or a duplicate. Some 2.8 million people are registered in two or more states, and 1.8 million registered voters are dead.

Offering his own warning, Kurt Schlichter mixes in the attitude of the news media:

The news covers, day in and day out, some overeating foreigner and drug lord baby mama who Donald Trump was mean to a couple decades ago, but no reporter ever asks our [ordinary] guy about his problems. And they don’t merely ignore him. They come after him, jamming things down his throat like gender neutral bathrooms and murderous Muslim refugees and Wall Street scams that mean he gets about .001% interest on that money he saved just like the experts told him to. And he’s expected to just take it.

This will not end well.

These are just a few quick links grabbed from Instapundit, but I see the same elsewhere.  In conversations with local political allies, I’ve found myself trying to explain that Trump doesn’t represent what a lot of his supporters think he represents, but I can tell the point doesn’t take hold, not really.

The worst part is that the election results don’t much matter, at this point.  If Clinton wins, many of us will consider her illegitimate from day 1, and the tensions between the elites and “the deplorables” will intensify no matter what she does as president (and, let’s be honest, we’ve reason to expect her to keep pushing the electroshock button on us).  If Trump wins and turns out to be who he’s been promising to be, the establishment will go into perpetual attack mode, and the deplorables will perceive themselves to be the target.  If President Trump turns out to be a fraud, then his supporters will feel even more betrayed and helpless.

Folks, the only solution is to stop with the reckless push for change and suppress the political correctness.  The college children have to be taken aside and taught the realities of life, and the celebrities have to be trained to feign humility.  And people in government have to start holding themselves and each other accountable, while letting go of some opportunities to line their pockets and grab more power.

Which is to say that the die is almost certainly already cast… so here we go.