By Dr. Mike Spaulding
March 23, 2025
American government, which is to say, American politics has become a convoluted mess of near opaqueness. This condition has been intentionally constructed to distract and disorient the casual observer. The more serious individual given to a thirst for truth will find the veneer frustrating but the treasure of seeing clearly achieved through perseverance, well worth the effort.
To begin to unravel the quagmire that has become American politics, one must refresh their understanding of history. Philosopher George Santayana once wrote, “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.” For our concern in this article, a more apt quote from Santayana might well be, “A country without a memory is a country of madmen.” Indeed, America has become a country of madmen and women. Irrational and illogical beliefs rule the day and are foisted upon sane people through the threat of lawfare – refuse to use the pronoun of choice for any number of delusional people and you could find yourself unemployed. Or refer to someone as a she when they claim to be non-binary; or refuse to accept that gender is a social construct. Or reject the idiocy that men can have babies. The question on millions of American’s lips is this: “How did we ever get to this place where good is evil and evil is good? How has darkness been substituted for light and light for darkness; bitter for sweet and sweet for bitter?” (Isaiah 5:20)
The answer to the insanities that have gripped America is found in revisiting our American history. When we understand our shared history, we will clearly see through all of the demonic subterfuge that characterizes our current situation. When we take the time to investigate, an undeniable pattern of deliberate corruption emerges.
We could start by examining the current progressive Marxists in our government. But they are merely the symptom or result of what came before them. To unravel the mess, we will start with a brief history of American politics.
I remember taking courses in American history in high school. It was and remains my favorite subject. Knowing our history means knowing our shared values. Understanding why our government did certain things makes sense when you understand the context or history of those decisions. Knowing our history also points out times when government failed its citizens.
Tammany Hall
One of the subjects I studied was called Tammany Hall. Briefly, Tammany Hall was the name given to the political machine that ruled New York City in the years after the American Civil War. The Society of St. Tammany began in 1789 as a social club whose members met to discuss many things of interest including the politics of the day. Not long after its founding the Society of Tammany began to realize that it could wield political influence. Society members also learned quickly that political influence resulted in their preferred candidates for office being elected. Tammany supported candidates showed their gratitude through political “graft” and “spoils” directed toward the organization and individual members. The graft and spoils given were jobs and other unmerited favors to party supporters who voted in block for candidates. Tammany Hall became so powerful that the Democrat national convention of 1868 was held at its New York City building.
Notable figures such as William Marcy “Boss” Tweed, elevated the corrupt power of Tammany within New York City politics even after Tweed’s illegal activities were exposed and he was imprisoned.
The point to understand here is that political “machines” that promise certain candidates elected office and then deliver on that promise is nothing new to American politics. The Daley political machine in Chicago is another well-known example of government corruption and the graft and spoils system that supports their continued existence while undermining our republic.
I doubt that today’s American student is taught anything concerning this era of political corruption. If they do, chances are good that it is shown in a positive light and not for the evil it was and remains today.
Codifying the Unwritten Rules of Corruption – Saul Alinsky
Long-lasting political machines that deliver consistent election victories for the Democrat party are a carefully managed enterprise. People need jobs, companies need contracts and voters need managed. These things are axiomatic in the Progressive Marxist Communist Democrat Party of today. Not until recently have the tactics of the Democrats become spelled out.
In 1971 a Chicago Community Organizer, which is synonymous with Marxist Communist, by the name of Saul Alinsky published a short book titled Rules for Radicals: A Primer for Realistic Radicals. Telling was Alinsky’s tribute to what he called the “first” radical.
Lest we forget at least an over-the-shoulder acknowledgment to the very first radical: from all our legends, mythology, and history (and who is to know where mythology leaves off and history begins — or which is which), the first radical known to man who rebelled against the establishment and did it so effectively that he at least won his own kingdom — Lucifer.
― Saul Alinsky, Rules for Radicals: A Pragmatic Primer for Realistic Radicals
Alinsky’s book was nowhere near a best seller. Its main appeal was to college students who thought they were born to change the world, and to young people who fancied themselves radicals. The truth is that Alinsky’s book appealed to the corrupt natures of rebels and anarchists. Among them were the Weather Underground, a far-left militant Marxist Communist group founded on the Ann Arbor campus of the University of Michigan in 1969. Alinsky’s book became a “how to” manual concerning corrupting voters through mis and dis information concerning the Marxist Communist agenda. It was popular among such people as Bill and Hillary Clinton, Frank Marshall Davis, and Barack Obama, a self-proclaimed Community Organizer himself.
Alinsky’s rules were simple and powerfully effective. Among them are two worth noting.
- Ridicule is man’s most potent weapon. There is no defense for ridicule even when the ridicule is irrational or infuriating. Ridicule can serve as pressure to force your enemy into concessions.
- Pick the target, freeze it, personalize it, and polarize it. Cut off the support network and isolate the target from sympathy. Go after people and not institutions; people hurt faster than institutions.
One anonymous author summarized Alinsky’s strategies thusly:
Progressives exploit the weaknesses inherent in the system, made weaker by pitting opposing forces against one another. They also oppose independent, morally strong, educated people because those individuals, especially in groups, can’t be manipulated easily. They attempt to end-run constitutional rights with social contract and dialectic consensus methods. Alinskyites engage in large scale social engineering, attempting to unfreeze a society using chaos, and to then refreeze it in a new predefined shape. The dividing lines they polarize people on are most often racial, economic, religious, and political.
The main goal of Alinskyites is to cause social instability through subversive and divisive rhetoric. One method is to control the outcome of the education system by lowering the standards of education so that it creates a dependent class. As adherents to the Cloward-Piven strategy, they use their political platforms to overload a society with social spending programs and class warfare to the point that hatred and division cause social panic. Once they’ve created a problem, they propose themselves as the answer and use wealth transfers and the trumping of rights as the method to bring about “equality”.
Progressives, Marxists, and Communists deploy Alinsky’s tactics in a manner which accuses their opposition of doing exactly what they are doing. Psychologists call this transference, but it is much more diabolical than this. The Democrats have been using the “race card” for decades. Its usefulness has been nearly depleted because Americans are not submitting to this intimidation any longer.
Americans are not racist for demanding law and order in their cities. They are not racist for insisting on a level playing field. They are not racist for demanding that borders are secured and that illegal aliens coming into this country are stopped completely. They are not racist for demanding that deadly drugs are taken off their streets. The Democrat Leftists Marxists Progressive Communists try to frame these issues in a way that suggests inherent virtue in lawlessness, in violent crime, in open borders, in lawfare aimed at Americans who disagree with their satanic agenda of chaos.
If this sounds familiar it is because this is exactly what the Democrat party has done to America for several decades. The shrieking and screaming emanating from Democrats such as Chuck Schumer, Elizabeth Warren, Corey Booker, Jasmine Crocket, Jamies Raskin, and Al Green just to name a select few, is the result of their Marxist tactics being exposed.
Graft and Spoils Become Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion
By far, the most egregious thing President Trump has done as far as the Progressive Marxist Communists – the Democrat Party – is concerned is he has destroyed their decades in the making Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion con.
Whereas the old Democrat party machine distributed jobs, political appointments, and other favors based on individual loyalties, the new Democrat Marxists distribute their graft and spoils to tribalized blocks. They have created ethnic and racial quotas as a means to ensure their desired outcomes. They have done so by infusing civil rights language into their propaganda. As Daniel Greenfield points out in a recent article:
The great objective of DEI (diversity, equity and inclusion) was to tribalize our institutions, recruiting government and corporate employees into affinity groups based on their race, sex, sexuality and other factors, and then defining institutional goals around the “right” tribal mix through selective hiring and promotions.
The complete inversion of civil rights, from race-neutral to race-conscious, also transformed the intended purpose of government and all lesser institutions, from tribal neutrality to tribal partisanship, and it was impossible to achieve this without tribalizing government.
Government and other institutions stopped being merit-based or democratic and came to reflect the tribal coalition politics that had come to define the Democratic Party’s urban machines.[1]
The Marxist Communist Democrat Party also managed to create fear among corporate board rooms to the extend that corporations rushed to create an office of DEI to signal to the race hustlers among the Democrat Party and their associated bureaucrats, that they had submitted to the new orthodoxy.
Tribalized blocs were embedded not only in elected government but within the bureaucracies whose employees became activists, promoting and rewarding their “own kind” to broker votes. The shake-down politics of Jesse Jackson’s PUSH movement and imitators like Al Sharpton began the process of embedding the same system within major corporations. Corporate lobbying, from Comcast’s NBC deal to Philip Morris’ tobacco business to Enron’s shady finances, came to depend on recruiting some of those same minority organizations to defend them.
Corporate DEI finished the job by modeling government and university systems with top DEI officers and “affinity groups” that employees were strongly encouraged to join for the sake of their careers. Soon corporate life had become equally tribalized with blocs of employees that saw it as their mission to defend and promote members of the same group above their stated jobs.[2]
While most of the press, Marxist Democrats, and activist judges appear concerned about the defunding of USAID, the real prize for the Trump administration is the dismantling of DEI within the government, educational institutions, and corporations.
The critical nature of this effort to destroy DEI cannot be understated. Americans must understand several important points when discussing DEI. First, by its very nature, DEI created civil rights violations. Merit was discarded for quotas and favored affiliation. Exasperated by a Critical Race Theory invention of white supremacy, and white privilege, civil rights violations were and to this day continue to be created by DEI initiatives.
Second, Americans must understand that the culture created by DEI will not disappear easily. Tribalism has become embedded in Human Resource departments across a spectrum of organizations. A whole generation of professionals have become convinced that certain groups of people – tribes – must be elevated and advanced despite the inefficiencies and in some professions, dangerous conditions they create for peers. The California wildfires debacle is a clear example of the insanity of DEI promotions. Of course, the mainstream media quickly and quietly moved that spotlight off of this disaster.
Third, American Christians must lead the charge to correct the defamatory and destructive practices and results of DEI. Race relations in America were deliberately enflamed by President Obama. A primary tactic of the Marxist democrat Party is to use race as a bludgeon to silence anyone who sees what they are doing to undermine peace and prosperity for all.
The challenges that America faces are not insurmountable, but they are formidable. An entire generation of college students as well as young professionals have been deceived to believe that prejudice and discrimination are virtues when they are applied to disfavored groups. When vice becomes virtue, the entire nation is at risk.
Where This Is Headed
The Marxist Democrat Party has nothing to lose at this point. Their favorability rating is the lowest it has been in over thirty years. Americans are disgusted and fed-up with racial, identity, diversity, and gender politics. The Founding Fathers intent for America must be realized once again. Continuing to assert tribal rights to quotas or reparations based on previous wrongs is itself racist. True equality is a level playing field. Freedom is the right to happiness and prosperity, but those pursuits are individually realized. Attempting to rig the system for an outcome that benefits corrupt politicians and further balkanizes America must be stopped. Diversity of thought is good, but forcing diversity of interests is sure to bring about a catastrophic implosion. Our national security and future of America are at stake.
For Christians who see the issues detailed in this article, the time is now to speak the truth of God. Returning to God is returning to truth telling. The Democrats have attempted to silence our voice. We must not let that continue.
I am reminded of a verse of Scripture that is apropos for our time:
The cords of the wicked have encircled me, But I have not forgotten Your law. Psalm 119:61
The future of America lies in our faithful obedience to God. His Word will shine the necessary light to walk out of this nightmare of illogical and irrational thought and into a brighter day.
The church must rise up and rediscover its voice. Evil and wickedness have a name, and the enablers of these things have a name too. Learn them and speak to them clearly with conviction.
© 2025 Mike Spaulding – All Rights Reserved
E-Mail Mike Spaulding: drmichaelspaulding@gmail.com
Footnotes:
[1] Daniel Greenfield, “DEI Detribalization,” March 18, 2025. Gatestone Institute International Policy Council. https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/21482/dei-detribalization
[2] Ibid.
