Originally appeared in American Thinker on October 19, 2019
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“For those who make the rules, there are no rules.” declares Tommy Shelby the infamous head of a crime family and also a newly elected Member of the British Parliament in the latest season of the hit T.V. series Peaky Blinders. The series is a multi-season award winning British crime drama appearing on Netflix in the U.S. It is set in Birmingham, England in the time period 1919 to 1929 and features a powerful and violent crime family called Peaky Blinders led by the Shelby family with Tommy Shelby as the lead mobster.
Tommy Shelby played by the actor Cillian Murphy in the series advances his gang’s criminal activities over the years from the ordinary mixture of theft, gambling and illegal distribution of alcohol and drugs to more ambitious moneymaking pursuits. Tommy is a portrayed as a highly intelligent and ingenious character and he envisions that holding elected political office would offer numerous opportunities to legitimize his business as well as offering a way to gain entry to all the potential inside dealings of government.
His objective is to gain the widest possible access to fame, power and riches beyond his previous reach as a local crime boss and to achieve the pinnacle of privilege and success. He runs for and wins a seat at Parliament from his home district in Birmingham running as a Socialist, publicly advocating on behalf of the working class. However, his most important constituents are himself and his family.
In the series, Tommy seizes the opportunity as a newly elected member of the political establishment to operate outside the law and use the powers of the office to align himself as an insider with several powerful government connections with access to various highly lucrative business opportunities associated with the workings of Government. Tommy’s working class sensibilities often conflict with his fellow members of Parliaments who are most often drawn from the upper classes; however, they find common interests in exploiting the system and collaborating for their mutual advantage.
The writers of the Peaky Blinders series use a fictional crime boss and cynically show him fitting right at home in the political corridors of power. The writers understanding both history and current day events are cognizant that being a politician can pay peculiarly well and public service often leads to private gain beyond the reach of most ordinary people. The mobster and associated politicians in this series are depicted going to extraordinary lengths to protect their interests and take maximum advantage of their insider positions.
President Trump’s victory in 2016 revealed deep anti-establishment anger and discontent across wide areas of our country. “Drain the Swamp” was one of his most popular campaign slogans. As a candidate, Trump ran against the entrenched Washington D.C. establishment and branded the government as a rigged system. His election platform was based on serving the interests of the people and changing a government that increasingly served only itself and certain segments of society and left the majority of the American working and middle classes behind.
In addition, eight years of the Obama Administration’s progressive brand of government led to the reality of an increased sense of lawlessness in our country and a continuing loss of trust by the American people in many of society’s leading institutions. Obama, Hillary Clinton and the Democrats in 2016 were significantly out of touch with what most Americans expected from their government and the election of Donald Trump represented a complete repudiation of their brand of Progressive politics and all they represented.
It is increasingly evident that the observance of the rule of law which is a fundamental prerequisite of a successfully functioning society was literally under assault during the Obama Administration and today this trend has been accelerated by the current leaders of the Democratic Party. President Trump is actively fighting today’s increasingly radical Democratic Party along with many Establishment Republicans that work tirelessly to make themselves unaccountable and beyond the reach of the law. Like Tommy Shelby, often their business and family interests are their most important constituencies rather than the citizens they were elected to represent.
President Obama and his Administration with little effective opposition from the Republicans in Congress grew the power of Washington and the Federal Government exponentially over his eight years in power. This fortified a powerful and entrenched ruling elite specifically selected for their support of the Left and Progressive policies to grow inside and outside of government as power flowed increasingly to Washington, therefore, increasing the Government’s influence on the daily lives of the American people.
Our Federal Government by any objective measure has simply grown too large and self-serving to be an effective agent for positive change or to provide effective political management of our country. Draining the swamp by downsizing our dysfunctional Federal Government should be our nation’s number one priority. A downsized Federal Government with a more limited role in our country’s affairs will free the American people to create a more prosperous and successful nation for all and go a long way to eliminate opportunities for self-serving insider dealing by our elected officials.
Running counter to the idea of limited government and even more alarming is today’s ever more left leaning Democratic Party actively supports the implementation of Socialism in America. Adoption of Socialism effectively grants politicians and the associated administrative state even greater opportunities to personally prosper at the expense of the people.
Trump did not run on a typical Republican platform promoting the policies of limited government. However, since assuming office President Trump has delivered the biggest cut in government regulation since President Reagan. This is an important first step in many that will need to follow to reduce the pervasive role of the Federal Government in all aspects of our daily lives.
On the other hand, our individual freedom will be diminished, and our country will move towards the road to failure if President Trump is ultimately unable to reverse the power of our increasingly elitist, corrupt and self-serving Government.
A critical first step is for Attorney General William Barr along with U.S. Attorney John Durham to hand down a set of criminal indictments for all the participants in the Russian hoax ranging up to the two people leading the coup to overthrow the results of an election – former President Barak Obama and 2016 Democratic Party Presidential nominee Hillary Clinton.
In addition, too many Americans will lose faith in and stop supporting of our system of government forever if other politicians such as Joe Biden and so many more are not held accountable for their transgressions. Justice must be served, or the consequences will be catastrophic for the long term prospects of our country. We urgently need to change the perception that a Mobster and crime boss like a Tommy Shelby would feel right at home in today’s Washington.
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