When trainee solicitor Hadia Tajik urges the Norwegian Defence Research Establishment (FFI) to investigate how “anti-state actors” have exploited the Epstein scandal to sow distrust towards politicians and institutions, she commits an act of such colossal cheek that it betrays a profound lack of self-awareness.

The washed-up former cabinet minister and Labour Party deputy leader — who narrowly escaped the commuter housing scandal by the skin of her teeth, and thankfully is no longer a top politician — is herself a prime example of why politicians and institutions have so richly deserved their loss of public trust.

Perhaps we could have lived with them helping themselves to perks they strictly speaking have no right to, if they hadn’t at the same time wrecked the country and left it wide open to invasion.

The current state of Norway is that, over a single generation, its administrators have undermined the Constitution, given away sovereignty, dismantled the armed forces, increased the number of foreigners by roughly a million, developed a sort of fascist economy in which the state is an all-dominating player, created ethnic and religious parallel societies, promoted Islam, laid the foundations for organised crime without historical precedent, turned hundreds of thousands of people who could have led productive lives into welfare clients, created a privileged elite of pseudo-Saudi princes in the state and NGO apparatus who enjoy great wealth despite being utterly useless, driven wealthy people out of the country, and made good progress in stripping the middle class of its assets through a tax and duty policy designed to suck the life force out of one. And they have made it impossible to build genuine opposition. Is it any wonder people don’t want to have children?

The list is not exhaustive; I’ve only mentioned the most important points here, though perhaps I should have included environmental destruction as well. In short, the country is no less buggered than the royal family — perhaps more so.

Those who bear any responsibility whatsoever for the state Norway is in today should simply shut their gobs — that is the very least they can do.

And as for who should actually be investigated, it is rather the anti-people elements within the state itself — precisely those who are destroying the country and leaving it defenceless against invasion. They have squandered and given away something that was never theirs to begin with: the Norwegians’ own land (they seem to think it’s vital that Palestinians or Ukrainians have a country of their own, but deny the same to the people they administer).

The Swedes never did anything like this, even when they ruled over us; instead, they allowed us to draft a constitution during the national awakening of the 19th century and released us in 1905. But now our administrators have relegated us to the doghouse in a European superstate — you know, the sort one fought against becoming part of between 1940 and 1945, and which we subsequently rejected in both 1972 and 1994.

Tajik thus believes FFI should investigate anti-state actors among the people, but FFI itself should not be spared scrutiny, nor should other institutions linked to the defence establishment, such as the Norwegian Defence University College, the Institute for Defence Studies, or others. We are talking here about deep-state actors who — together with system media and NGOs pursuing policies the state itself has no mandate for — are undermining democracy.

You know that “demo-” comes from “demos”, meaning “the people”, right? If you want a successful democracy, you must first have a successful people. What Norway’s administrators have done is weaken Norwegians as a people — not least by sowing division through the insane immigration policy pursued over the last generation. Why has the asylum convention still not been denounced? Why has chain migration from Muslim clan societies not been halted?

So to those with the sort of responsibility that Tajik fortunately no longer holds: stop tormenting the Norwegian people, start doing your bloody jobs, and hold your tongues. Then perhaps — just perhaps — we might forgive you for not acknowledging your guilt. Neither politicians nor institutions have any natural right to respect. Like the rest of us, they must earn it every single day.

But there is an asymmetry here. Let me put it as simply as I can: the people are more important than the institutions. The people do not exist for the institutions; the institutions exist for the people (to twist a well-known saying from the man from Nazareth a bit). I think we can all see that this is not the situation at the moment.