Faction: a number of citizens, whether amounting to a minority or majority of the whole, who are united and actuated by some common impulse of passion, or of interest, adverse to the rights of other citizens, or to the permanent and aggregate interests of the community.

— James Madison Federalist #10

August 14, 2019 "Information Clearing House" -   Never has the word “conspiracy” been spoken so easily.

Never has the dark evil that is Factionalism and Neopatrimonialism been on such stark display.

If you think Jeffrey Epstein, a man with an inordinate, if strongly misguided lust for life, killed himself rather than was murdered by his erstwhile “friends and associates” you still haven’t taken the red pill.

The writers of the Federalist Papers were famously concerned about the possibility of faction in the United States; their fear was founded in part by their understanding of human psychology and ancient history. They were rightly skeptical about the possibility of totally avoiding the rise of an organized collection of individuals who would capture the state and by implication spread their influence and power throughout the fabric of civil society.

Such a relatively large faction is in existence today, although it is, for the most part, hidden in its day to day workings. As the founding fathers well understood, nothing is more natural than a group of persons tacitly agreeing to work together to further their own private interests at the expense of all others who are not included in their surreptitious compact. The group that can successfully capture the state is master of all else. This activity is emphatically not a direct result of capitalism but of something much more ancient and primordial; the lust for total control and unlimited power. Cabals, cliques, compacts, conspiracies, secret hierarchies have existed in all types of polities, places, and times. Machiavelli spoke of it at length. Even Kant mentioned it. It is nothing outlandish or new. People will scheme for unfair advantage and privilege; even animals do it on a regular basis.

Yet the problem is that human beings are also equipped with a sense of justice and fair play. When a polity that purports to epitomize the ideal of a modern democratic state with the rule of law, representative government, separation of powers, an impartial bureaucracy, and careers open to all talents is de facto nothing of the sort, it becomes inevitable for symptoms of decay, rot, and outrageous human vice not unlike that of the Roman Empire to increasingly appear.