Two events occurred recently that are tangentially related, but which together point to a broader issue in contemporary politics and culture. The first was the FBI raid on Donald Trump’s home which recovered documents that are allegedly the property of the American government. That, at least, was the initial explanation for the raid. Later, when outrage erupted that a former president of the United States was treated in such an unprecedentedly dishonourable way, the story changed, and the public was told that Trump was holding top secret documents about nuclear weapons.

Another less seismic but important event happened recently which relates in tangible ways to Orange Man Bad. John Howard described Trump’s failure to accept the results of the American presidential election as ‘atrocious’ and ‘appalling’. Both of these events are linked by one unusual idiosyncrasy – they rely for their veracity on the morality and honesty of government bureaucrats. Howard’s claims may be true, and he could have deep psychological insights into the malevolence of Donald Trump’s character, but in reality, he’s relying on the words of flawed individuals with an agenda.

Perhaps, though, there’s a more prosaic explanation for Trump’s behaviour since the election. Maybe Trump believes that after all the deceptions, machinations and gaslighting he’s experienced, the establishment would do anything, and did do everything, to make him lose the election. This claim, unlike Howard’s surface-level analysis, however, is true. It’s not ignorance or a conspiracy theory.

The legitimacy of the FBI’s raid on Mar-a-Lago and the crux of Howard’s analysis of Trump’s character could both be correct. The problem is we don’t know the truth, because nobody trusts institutions or politicians anymore. One of the most depressing aspects of contemporary politics is that the public has had a kaleidoscopic view of the Machiavellian behaviour of the establishment – and we can’t unsee what has been revealed. Whether ideologically biased, status-driven, or simply based on vested interests, a subterranean bureaucratic elite, which includes political parties, non-governmental organisations, Big Tech companies, the legacy media, and, most importantly, the security and intelligence services of America have been revealed for what they are – a corrupt and cynical shadow government prepared to do anything to further an agenda. It’s one of the most depressing revelations in recent political history, a type of reverse Wizard of Oz, where, instead of a little, innocuous man with a bullhorn, we have a permanent monolithic establishment humming away in the background with too much power.

Divining the truth of how the establishment operates, to see behind, in other words, what on the surface appears to be a classic, dumb conspiracy theory is difficult, but, as Christopher Hitchens said, if the trajectory of events always falls on one side of the ledger, then you should at least be suspicious that something is amiss. This is true no matter what your politics.

Even if you dislike Donald Trump, no impartial observer of America since 2015 can deny Hitchens’ truism in relation to how the establishment has behaved towards Trump. The hostility, bad faith and sheer unrelenting dishonesty have been extraordinary. And it hasn’t been just one person, political party or group attacking Trump, though. It’s been multifarious sources of real, not imaginary, power; it’s the establishment, to put it bluntly, the elites, in other words, coalescing to thwart the big orange déclassé vulgarian. The question ‘who watches the watchers?’ has never been more pertinent.

The amount of shifty and deceptive behaviour by the establishment during Trump’s term in office is staggering. The story, though, is almost unknown to the public and also, it seems, to John Howard. To give a small sample: the Russia collusion hoax, which was funded by Hillary Clinton and the Democratic party, the two show trial impeachments, the Steele dossier, or the simply ridiculous claims that Trump suggested people drink bleach or said that fascists were ‘good people’ at Charlottesville.

What is less known, though, is the extraordinarily disingenuous, bad faith and illegal methods used by the establishment to ensure that Trump would lose the 2020 election.

The election fraud in 2020 was not obvious in-your-face criminality like hacking the voting machines. It’s more accurately described as death by a thousand cuts, none of which on its own amounted to prima facie wrongdoing, which is how the scam maintained a veneer of respectability. Although, to be objective, if authorities change the voting laws before an election in such a way that previously illegal practices are now legal, it’s simply disingenuousness to describe the election as free and fair. And this is exactly what happened when laws related to mail-in ballots were changed across the country, and when standards of signature verification were altered or eliminated entirely. Another deeply concerning issue was the role of Big Tech in manipulating information that whitewashed Joe Biden and blackened the reputation of Trump. Information about the Hunter Biden laptop scandal, which had tons of juicy information about Biden and corruption in Russia, Ukraine and China, including real, slanderous material and not the pretend controversies contained in the two Trump impeachments, was censored by the media in the weeks before the election. Big Tech also, through Mark Zuckerberg and a $400 million donation, created organisations that state governments hired to run the election in swing states across the country. These activist organisations, who were supposed to be non-partisan, focused their resources on multiple ways to benefit Biden and impede Trump in counties with slim electoral vote margins. Big Tech also banned criticism of the election. In combination, these extraordinarily disingenuous and deceitful measures were a new form of institutional gerrymandering.

Biden won the popular vote, but American presidential elections are decided by the electoral college, and fraud in a few counties in swing states can change the outcome. This is what happened in 2020. Technically, Biden won the election, but only elections that are free, fair and transparent are legitimate. And the election that ousted Donald Trump from office was none of these things.

In future years, the story of the Trump presidency will be how the establishment rejected the democratic will of the people.

It’s a disgraceful story and the uncouth, vulgar, flawed and blasphemous Donald Trump won’t be the primary villain.