Breakdown of law and order under the Biden administration

 Charles Lipson:

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The problem we face, beyond the specifics about crime, COVID, duplicity, and social division, is a palpable breakdown in public order at the same time the public has lost confidence in our government officials and the institutions they lead. The two meta-problems—the breakdown of order and erosion of public confidence—are deeply intertwined because we count on our leaders and institutions to give us reliable information, provide a stable environment (so each of us can go about our lives), and abide by the same rules we all do. Those are foundational elements of a peaceful, liberal, democratic society. Their attrition imperils that society and its governance.

Citizens are all too aware of the collapse of law and order in cities and on America’s southern border. They are aware, too, that the current administration and the mayors of most big cities are unwilling to speak honestly about the problems. They know that Vice President Kamala Harris’ exclusive focus on the “root causes” of migration from Central America is really a way of evading the painful question: Why won’t the Biden administration stop the unprecedented surge of illegal immigration or even speak candidly about it?

The danger and dishonesty come after decades of eroding trust in public officials and the institutions they lead. Polls in the early 1960s showed over 70% of the public believed public officials were telling the truth. Those numbers have declined steadily to less than 20%. Lyndon Johnson and Richard Nixon got that ball rolling downhill, but it hasn’t stopped. The mistrust goes beyond public officials to include news media, social media, universities, corporations, unions, churches, and even civic organizations such as the Boy Scouts.

The public put aside those doubts, at least temporarily, when the COVID pandemic struck in February and March 2020. Almost everyone was willing to follow mask mandates and business closures. They were willing to let small children skip in-person learning and use their computers. But after more than a year of self-confinement and school closures, the public’s patience has run out.


So has the public’s confidence that health officials know what they are doing and are telling us the truth. This mistrust grew when people discovered the initial guidance not to wear masks was a deliberate lie. At the time, Fauci and his colleagues actually believed masks would help, but they feared that saying so would lead to a run on masks, leaving none for medical professionals. Instead of trusting the public and retailers like Amazon and Walgreen’s, they lied. In June 2020, Fauci explained his reasons: “We were concerned the public health community, and many people were saying this, were concerned that it was at a time when personal protective equipment, including the N95 masks and the surgical masks, were in very short supply. And we wanted to make sure that the people, namely, the health care workers, who were brave enough to put themselves in harm’s way, to take care of people who you know were infected with the coronavirus and the danger of them getting infected."

However benign Fauci’s goal, the longer-term effects were pernicious. They were bound to be once the public discovered the deception. How could anyone trust his future statements at face value? He is paying that cost personally now that he is trying to reassure the public that he had nothing to do with funding the Wuhan virology lab’s gain-of-function research.
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That confidence depends on neutral procedures. When O.J. Simpson was found not guilty of double murder, there was widespread disbelief, but the public still accepted the jury’s decision. Even if the decision was misguided, the process made it legitimate. Contrast that acceptance with the FBI and Department of Justice whitewashing Hillary Clinton’s reckless mishandling of classified data. No fair-minded person believed the investigation and charging decision was even-handed. Ordinary folks have languished in jail for far less serious violations, such as a submariner whose photographs inadvertently included classified equipment. Nobody else got the FBI director to write an exoneration before the central figure was even interviewed. Director James Comey then compounded his blunder by announcing he would not charge her (a decision that should have been made only by the Department of Justice) and, later, by holding a press conference that detailed Clinton’s wrongdoing without charging her, a flat violation not only of FBI standards but of centuries of precedent. It may have cost her the election.

Beyond those egregious violations, the FBI’s very different investigations of Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump are why the public no longer believes the nation’s top law enforcement agency is politically neutral or even competent. Its leaders seem ready to kneecap their enemies and cover up their own agents’ wrongdoing.

During the Comey years, when these spying-and-leaking scandals emerged, most conservative commentators defended the rectitude of ordinary agents—the “99 percent who do a great job.” That defense is seldom heard these days. After all, lots of “great agents” must have known about their bosses’ misdeeds, yet none blew the whistle. They were just ordinary bureaucrats, protecting their pensions and promotions.
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Now there is also the double standard of the FBI in dealing with the BLM, Antifa riots in contrast to their handling of the Jan. 6 riot.  I have yet to hear a rational answer from the FBI to explain their different treatment.  The BLM, Antifa riots were far more violent in terms of deaths and destruction yet none of those perps are reported to be sitting in solitary confinement waiting for charges to be filed.