Has the Left Gone Completely Crazy? No, Actually.

[1]2,223 words

Undeniably, we are seeing madness on display. But with some of them, there’s method in the madness. And the method is far more frightening. Who is purely mad and who has methodical madness pretty neatly divides into, respectively, ordinary Liberal rank and file, and Liberal leadership. As an example of the former I can really do no better than the Antifa nutcase who stormed the stage at a recent Lauren Southern speech [2]. As the men with butterfly nets carry her away she screams repeatedly “I love refugees! I love refugees!” One of my Facebook friends commented, “The brain virus is too far advanced in this one. Too late to save her . . .”

Lately it has seemed like Liberals have completely lost their minds. It feels like some Night of the Living Dead scenario has taken place: a mysterious comet or radioactive space probe has passed too close to the earth, causing everyone who ever wore Birkenstocks or enjoyed John Lennon’s “Imagine” to turn into mindless, ravening ghouls. I don’t need to offer many examples of what I’m talking about, because my readers are all too familiar with the phenomenon. The latest lunacy, of course, has been the talk about how Trump committed “treason” in his recent meeting with Vladimir Putin. Judge Jeanine put together a nice montage [3] of the talking heads repeatedly uttering the treason charge. This was an ironic role reversal. It has usually been right-wingers who have been preoccupied with who’s committing treason – and usually leftists who’ve gotten accused of it, and worn the label proudly (see, for example John Stormer’s notorious 1964 book None Dare Call It Treason [4]).

Of course, the treason charge is not just ironic it’s also absurd – and just the latest in a long list of absurdities. Well before this, the talking heads were referring to Trump as a “Russian asset.” It really does seem like the orders go out from someplace and the usual suspects just repeat the same talking points over and over. It seems that way because that’s probably how it is. More shocking than the behavior of “journalists” (who have now wrecked their credibility beyond repair) has been the behavior of politicians, from whom the former are undoubtedly taking direction. The nadir of the treason business was reached when Rep. Steve Cohen of Tennessee called for a military coup against the President. But some Republicans have joined in. This includes the aptly-named Jeff Flake, U.S. Representative from Arizona.

What we are seeing here is an imperiled Establishment – largely the Democrats but with Republicans well represented also – basically trying anything in a desperate attempt to bring down Donald Trump. It seems like we’re witnessing insanity, but it’s actually a cynical, self-conscious strategy. The idea is to keep throwing feces at the wall until some of it sticks. And by that I really mean sticks with the voters – gets them angry enough to vote out the Republicans in the midterms and reject Trump in 2020. They’ll try Russia, they’ll try Stormy Daniels, they’ll try, basically, anything. We call them crazy, but it’s actually far worse than that. Crazy people aren’t responsible for what they do. These people are cynically trying to manipulate voters with whatever bullshit will work. If at first you don’t succeed, try, try again. And they apparently think Americans are so stupid that they’ll never notice the pattern.

They keep trying the Russia nonsense, even though it has not gotten much traction with anyone other than dyed-in-the-wool Liberals. Gallup just released a poll [5] on what concerns Americans most. “Russia” was named as a concern by less than one percent – in other words, so small a percentage it couldn’t be measured. (By contrast, “immigration/illegal aliens” was the top “non-economic” concern – which is encouraging.) But the Liberals now have too much invested in the Russia thing to simply let it drop, so they will keep throwing it out there hoping some of it sticks – at least until the midterms, when they might change tactics and go back to accusing Trump of being attracted to beautiful women.

Yes, the Liberal leadership is clearly not crazy. But that’s not the same thing as saying that their strategy is sensible. In fact, the strategy seems crazy because it is dangerously foolish and has the obvious potential to backfire. In the end, American voters are just not as stupid as Liberals think that they are. With ordinary, decent, hard-working Americans all of this is simply making the left look very, very bad. So why did they pick such a dumb strategy? Too often we make the mistake of thinking that those in power have got to be clever. In fact, the left is exhibiting a basic human frailty that afflicts us all, the mighty and the lowly: desperate people often do foolish things.

The threat to the left is very real. As many have pointed out, they were counting on current demographic trends to keep them in power forever. If immigration (illegal and otherwise) made whites a minority in America, it would be virtually impossible for Republicans to take the Presidency or Congress. Democrats were quite willing to preside over a Brazil-like nation dominated by the jetsam of the third world. Many of them very probably believe their equality bullshit, and think that these “vibrant” immigrants really will enrich us and become Astronauts and brain surgeons.

If Trump actually succeeds in turning back the immigrant tide, he will cripple the power of the Democrats. Securing the border is the first step. If he succeeds in that (and we still have no wall) is repatriation next? In response, the left now calls for allowing illegals to vote openly in our elections (as possibly millions of them did in 2016 – something for which we now have credible evidence). In several states, anyone with a driver’s license can vote – and in those same states illegals can get driver’s licenses. No proof of citizenship is required. The Left is now also calling for prison inmates to be able to vote – about 37% of whom are black, and 35% Hispanic (who are often counted as “white”). Could the Democrats make their agenda anymore obvious?

There are other factors involved, of course. By no means is the rage of the Left a simple phenomenon. While undoubtedly much of what they do boils down to a cynical grab for power, one can’t discount the power of ideology. In other words, a lot of these people actually do believe at least some of the nonsense they spew. Earlier I said I suspect it is mostly the liberal rank and file who are genuinely unhinged – who actually believe that Trump is a Russia asset, and that ICE is like the SS, etc. But surely at least some of their elected leaders believe these things as well. And this now seems to be preparing the ground for a genuine split in the ranks of the Democrats – one that parallels the “populist” uprising within the Republican party that brought us President Trump.

While the Democratic leadership is bent on a get-Trump-anyway-we-can strategy, their supporters, especially the younger ones, are lurching further and further to far left idealism. This is already resulting in some political upsets. A notable recent example of this is Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s defeat of Establishment Democrat Joe Crowley in the New York primary. Ocasio-Cortez is a “Democratic Socialist” who wants to abolish ICE and send every Hotentot to college. Her naivete and lack of basic knowledge [6] of anything at all are breathtaking. Even more recently, the executive committee of the California Democratic Party endorsed Kevin de León, former leader of the state Senate, over 85-year-old Dianne Feinstein. This is despite the fact that Feinstein got 2.9 million primary votes to de León’s mere 804,000. This couldn’t have anything to do with the fact that De León is part Mexican, part Guatemalan could it? In 2016, De León introduced the “California Values Act,” forbidding the use of state and local resources to aid ICE in deportation actions.

The Democratic Party, in short, is headed for schism. Cooler heads among the leadership know that this far, far left stuff is not going to play outside of California, New York, and Vermont. But they are going to need to get some Democratic congressmen in line. Sensing the drift toward the far left in younger Democratic voters, Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand, D-NY, has said that the “first thing” Democrats need to do if they flip the House and Senate is to “get rid of” ICE. She is not alone. Earlier this month Rep. Mark Pocan, D-Wis., introduced a bill to abolish ICE, co-sponsored by nine other Democrats. After some pushback from fellow Democrats, who realize this is not a winning position, Pocan later appeared on Tucker Carlson’s show and stated he would vote against his own bill (!). He also declined to comment on crimes committed by illegal aliens.

All of this, needless to say, is just manna from heaven. The more confused, reckless, and divided the left is the better. But lest we gloat too much about this, we must remember that we also have to deal with the problem of the divided right. For it would be utterly simplistic to say that it is only the left that is unhinged and desperate to destroy Trump. It is, of course, the entire Washington Establishment, left and right (if that distinction really means anything).

It would be an understatement to say that the Establishment was surprised by Trump’s victory. It has shaken them to the core. They thought they basically had the whole thing sown up: every four years American stooges would go on voting for two virtually identical pro-globalist, pro-open borders candidates. Quite correctly, they have interpreted Trump’s victory as a “populist” rejection of business as usual. (I put “populist” in quotes because I can’t figure out what the difference is between it and “democratic.”) And they are determined to go back to business as usual, and make sure that this never happens again.

Part of the issue is power, pure and simple. The Establishment does not want to relinquish it, especially to some nouveau riche, orange-haired tyro and his millions of allegedly stinky Walmart-shopping supporters. How dare they! But, here again, we must not discount the importance of ideology. Establishment Democrats and Republicans are committed to certain paradigms – among them globalism and multiculturalism – which they thought had emerged as unquestionably victorious. If the naïve liberal comeback is “but it’s 2018,” the Establishment equivalent is “but history has ended.” Once uttered confidently, this is now increasingly the Establishment’s cri de coeur. Just as they didn’t see the fall of communism coming, so they have been blindsided by the rise of nationalism.

And speaking of the fall of communism, we must consider another important Establishment paradigm that is dying hard. Of all that currently seems like madness, what I actually find most astonishing is that these people want to keep the Cold War going. When the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991, we were offered a golden opportunity to make the Russians our friends and allies. Instead of doing that, we continued to treat them as adversaries. And we held onto NATO, even though with the collapse of communism NATO had become obsolete. The U.S. continues to contribute around $700 million to NATO annually, while other nations in the alliance fail to come anywhere close to contributing the required 2% of GDP.

As everybody has heard, Trump went to NATO and had the terrible manners to point this out. Trump is the first U.S. president who’s gone to NATO and not behaved like a man who’s just joined an exclusive country club and is anxious not to use the wrong fork. Having spent most of his life surrounded by wealth, power, and celebrity, Trump is not impressed by much. And he’s used to be snubbed by snobs and doesn’t care (note the way our allies sniggered at him in 2017 [7], as if to say “who let that vulgarian in here?”). Trump also mentioned the fact that the Germans have now entered into an agreement with Putin whereby they will become dependent upon Russian oil. So basically, we are paying to defend Germany against a country it is now willingly dependent upon.

The whole scenario is ludicrous, and it is obviously time for NATO to be dumped into the ashbin of history. But for the Washington Establishment, this is unthinkable. They are wedded to the Cold War paradigm of the last seventy years and they will not let it die. There is really too much at stake for them. As Pat Buchanan has stated with his usual brilliance [8], “By cheering Brexit, dissing the EU, suggesting NATO is obsolete, departing Syria, trying to get on with Putin, Trump is threatening the entire U.S. foreign policy establishment with what it fears most – irrelevance. For if there is no war on, no war imminent, and no war wanted, what does a War Party do?”

So, in the final analysis it’s not really insanity that explains the actions of the Establishment in general, and liberals in particular. That’s being far too generous. The real explanation is stupidity, blindness, narrow self-interest, lust for power, failure to think outside the box, and unwillingness to change with the times. The usual human vices.

I make an exception for that Antifa girl who stormed the Lauren Southern talk. She really is crazy. She and her friends.