The Insidious Erosion of Fairness

John Teichert, Candidate for U.S. Senate in Maryland

Apart from the flashy topics about fairness and equity that receive daily news coverage, there is a real concern about insidious unfairness that is evident all around us. Big government has aligned with big media, big education, and big technology to tip the scales by biasing popular attitudes and perceptions to alter results. Doing so fundamentally erodes the fairness of our system, and is evident in three recent examples of collusion among the power structures that reveal a system that is becoming increasingly unfair. These institutions cover up mistakes, obscure truth, and aid and abet activities to maintain the authority and credibility of their preferred political partners in Washington, DC.

The most recent edition of Foreign Affairs provides a textbook example. This version was physically published days before the barbaric attack by Hamas. In it, National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan embarrassingly states the following:

• While “the President inherited a region that was highly pressurized”, his efforts have resolved the situation such that “the region is quieter than it has been for decades.”
• “We have de-escalated crises in Gaza and restored direct diplomacy between the parties after years of its absence.”
• “We have acted militarily to protect U.S. personnel, and we have enhanced deterrence, combined with diplomacy, to discourage further aggression.”

While the government and its institutional partners can’t retract the hardcopy version that I have sitting on my desk, they did everything else possible to scrub the record. Foreign Affairs allowed their friends in big government to revise the online version of the article to cover up their misguided assessments. All that is left online is a small and innocuous Editor’s Note at the end of the lengthy article. Problem solved as big media and big tech swooped in to maintain the authority and credibility of their friends in big government. 

National Security Advisor Sullivan’s article, in addition to these glaring missteps, also touts the success of Bidenomics. While much can be said about the President’s policies that have tied an anchor around the neck of the average American, Sullivan’s comments provide a springboard for the next example of unfairness – changing the definition of words. The first two quarters of 2022 saw a decline in GDP in the United States – the textbook and long-established definition of a recession. Yet, the President and the Treasury Department quickly changed the meaning of the word recession, aided and abetted by their big tech and big media partners, to alter perceptions of reality and obscure the administration’s shortcomings that have so burdened the American people.

In the midst of the horrifying, terrorist-supporting activity observed on college campuses, big education revealed its complicity with the problems of fairness. In addition to their overwhelming, systemic, institutional biases that cater to the far left and sideline conservative voices, they rallied together with their big institutional partners to protect one of their own. Harvard President Claudine Gay was skewered as Congresswoman Elise Stefanik questioned her about the university’s response to pervasive antisemitism. Around the time that Harvard’s senior governing board unanimously supported and excused her morally bankrupt responses, they were quickly covering up for her, excusing chronic plagiarism that was so pervasive that it included the Acknowledgements section of her Dissertation. They hoped a few publication revisions, and the stunning euphemism “duplicative language”, buoyed by support from big media and big tech, provided the institutional support to make the problem go away. Fortunately, the American people ensured that it didn’t!

The institutional biases revealed by these situations are deeply troubling, and the collusion among major players is creating a system that is fundamentally unfair. It erodes democracy, biasing perceptions, attitudes, and outcomes. As we enter a season characterized by the solemn right to select our next leaders, we must be extra vigilant to unveil the areas that create a systemically unfair system and that could ultimately lead to chronically unfair election results.