Here’s an excerpt from Peggy Noonan’s latest article in the Wall Street Journal, “Clinton Embodies Washington’s Decadence”:

But the real decadence Americans see when they look at Washington is an utterly decadent system. Just one famous example from the past few years:

A high official in the IRS named Lois Lerner targets those she finds politically hateful. IRS officials are in the White House a lot, which oddly enough finds the same people hateful. News of the IRS targeting is about to break because an inspector general is on the case, so Ms. Lerner plants a question at a conference, answers with a rehearsed lie, tries to pin the scandal on workers in a cubicle farm in Cincinnati, lies some more, gets called into Congress, takes the Fifth—and then retires with full pension and benefits, bonuses intact. Taxpayers will be footing the bill for years for the woman who in some cases targeted them, and blew up the reputation of the IRS.

Why wouldn’t Americans think the system is rigged?

This is Washington in our era: a place not so much of personal as of civic decadence, where the Lois Lerner always gets away with it.

As a Trump supporter said a while back, “We are voting with our middle finger.” Translation: we don’t have pitchforks and torches, but we do have The Donald.

One way or another, the nobles manage to quell insurrections. One way or another, they manage to defer their own downfall. At some point, civil violence overtakes their folly. We just pray that this time around, in history’s greatest empire, we manage to get rid of these people without violence.