The New York Times is very worried. In the lead-up to a “crucial election,” the government is arresting dozens (or even more) of its opponents and tying them up in court cases. The Times understands what’s going on: The government that controls the criminal justice system is “quietly crushing a democracy.” The only problem with this legitimate worry about what happens when a government criminalizes its political opponents is that the Times isn’t worried about the Biden Justice Department or various state prosecutors. It’s worried about elections in Bangladesh.

The following is the title, subtitle, and opening paragraphs of the Times’s article about Bangladesh:

Quietly Crushing a Democracy: Millions on Trial in Bangladesh

The most active rivals to the country’s ruling party face dozens, even hundreds, of court cases each, paralyzing the opposition as a crucial election approaches.

Bangladesh’s multiparty democracy is being methodically strangled in crowded courtrooms across this country of 170 million people.

Nearly every day, thousands of leaders, members and supporters of opposition parties stand before a judge. Charges are usually vague, and evidence is shoddy, at best. But just months before a pivotal election pitting them against the ruling Awami League, the immobilizing effect is clear.

About half of the five million members of the main opposition party, the Bangladesh Nationalist Party, are embroiled in politically motivated court cases, the group estimates. The most active leaders and organizers face dozens, even hundreds, of cases. Lives that would be defined by raucous rallies or late-night strategizing are instead dominated by lawyers’ chambers, courtroom cages and, in Dhaka, the torturously snail-paced traffic between the two.

The above words are from the same outlet that has cheered on the arrests, detention, and disproportionately brutal sentences for hundreds of people who walked through the Capitol or even went further and tore down fences or urged the completely unarmed crowd to come to the Capitol itself.

They’re words from the same outlet that has enthusiastically supported every one of the blatantly political four indictments against President Trump, who is Biden’s lead opposition candidate.

They’re words from the same outlet that was horrified when Elon Musk allowed free speech on Twitter (now X).

They’re words from the same outlet that cheered on the destruction that BLM and Antifa (the Democrat party’s paramilitary organizations) wreaked across America, including attacks on the White House, federal buildings, and police stations.

I could go on, but just writing those words feels like slamming my head repeatedly into a brick wall.

What we’re seeing is hypocrisy on an epic scale. The New York Times evinces the smug satisfaction that rules are for the little people and that its values are so transcendently important that it is above the rules.

The Times hive-mind would agree that, in principle, the norms in representative democracies are that political parties engage in a battle of ideas before the people, who then vote depending on which ideas appeal to them most. The Times Borg also freely admits that it’s bad that the government in Bangladesh is violating those norms by abandoning the debate in favor of brute force. But in America, shriek the apparatchiks at what was once the nation’s preeminent news outlet, government crackdowns are appropriate because the Democrats control the police state and are using it for “the greater good.”

I doubt that readers of the Times are disturbed by this grotesque political narcissism. I devoutly hope, though, that ordinary Americans are getting fed up with Democrats who support free elections abroad but, in America, redefine “democracy” to mean “we always win, no matter how many norms, institutions, and lives we must destroy to achieve total victory.”

Image: The New York Times headquarters (edited) by Ajay Suresh. CC BY 2.0.