By\u00a0Jeffrey Folks
\nAmerican Thinker<\/p>\n
The left is determined to sink the Trump presidency.<\/p>\n
But something even more important than the Trump presidency is at stake. \u00a0The ultimate target is not Trump, but human liberty.\u00a0 Donald Trump is a great man, but far greater are the millions of Americans whose dream of liberty he represents. \u00a0Obviously, the left hates Trump with a vengeance, but what they despise even more is the average American with his dream of freedom and opportunity.<\/p>\n
From the left’s perspective, the Trump presidency is illegitimate not because it lacked a plurality of votes or because of the supposed Russian connection. \u00a0It is illegitimate because it gives voice to those who do not deserve representation. \u00a0Hillary Clinton let it slip when\u00a0she mocked<\/a>\u00a0the “basket of deplorables,” those whom she accused of racism, sexism, homophobia, xenophobia, and Islamophobia. \u00a0Having at first insisted that “half” of Trump voters fall into these categories, she then\u00a0retreated<\/a>\u00a0from that figure: it was somewhat less than half who are deplorable.<\/p>\n Rarely has a presidential candidate been so candid and so obtuse at the same time, for “deplorable” is exactly what the left thinks of average Americans. \u00a0And for that reason, Trump’s presidency cannot be allowed to succeed, even if sinking Trump means sinking the country. \u00a0The left is willing to savage our economy, trash health care, weaken our national defense, and lose the fight against terrorism just to see that the deplorables are kept in their place. \u00a0That is the central motive of the anti-Trump forces.<\/p>\n That sort of disdain for the heartland has a long history stretching back to John Quincy Adams, with his determination not to see Jackson achieve the presidency. \u00a0After the Era of Jackson and the Civil War that followed, it continued with the political dominance of the Northeast, the victory of McKinley over William Jennings Bryan, Wilson’s expansion of government powers during WWI (including the Sedition Act of 1918), FDR’s reversal of Coolidge’s small-government policies, Johnson’s disastrous anti-poverty programs, and Obama’s governance by executive order in defiance of the people’s elected representatives. \u00a0Ordinary Americans have always had to struggle against the ambitions of a political elite that assumes it has the right to govern in their place.<\/p>\n It goes without saying that the ideology of the left has always been anti-democratic and anti-pluralistic. \u00a0The terror tactics of radical student groups in the 1960s revealed a disdain for democracy, as has the barrage of environmental lawsuits aimed at blocking legal property development. \u00a0And the more recent rulings of rogue judges obstructing Trump’s immigration orders.<\/p>\n Nor does the left believe in open debate within a pluralistic society. \u00a0Conservative speakers are blocked from appearing on college campuses. \u00a0Conservative opinion is hardly represented in the mainstream liberal media. \u00a0When Democrats controlled the Senate, Republicans were blocked from presenting amendments. \u00a0Even now, Senate Democrats have allowed confirmation of only two of President Trump’s nominees to the federal courts.<\/p>\n As many writers, including Jonah Goldberg, have documented, the American left today has much in common with radical regimes of the past. \u00a0In his superb book\u00a0The Dragons of Expectation<\/em>\u00a0(New York 2005),\u00a0Robert Conquest noted the continuity between these violent regimes and the left today: “if no longer driven by theory [that is, hardcore Marxism], the instinctive urge to impose values or opinions remains. And the urge toward using the state for those purposes is still common in the West” (77).<\/p>\n It is important to understand the true source of the left’s disdain. \u00a0It has nothing to do with policy or the good of the country. \u00a0It is, in effect, closely aligned with the psychology of racism \u2013 the need of defensive groups to transfer their uncertainties to an object of scorn. \u00a0In his chapter on “Judgement and Condemnation” in\u00a0Crowds and Power<\/em>\u00a0(New York, 1961), Elias Canetti begins his analysis with “the pleasure of pronouncing an unfavorable verdict.” \u00a0This “cruel pleasure … consists in relegating something to an inferior group” and then pronouncing judgment (296). \u00a0Underlying the hostile rhetoric is always “the urge to push it to its conclusion, to the active and bloody hostility of two packs” (297), a process that ultimately entails the pronouncement of a “death sentence,” whether actual or metaphorical (relegating one’s opponents to the inhuman “basket of deplorables” or finding other ways of denying them speech and volition).<\/p>\n This is a dangerous state of affairs. \u00a0The left’s brazenness is something new, and something that holds the potential for great danger. \u00a0As a Fox News commentary\u00a0pointed out<\/a>\u00a0at the time of Hillary’s deplorables remark, “anything [traditional Americans] say ‘no’ to is to be labeled racist, sexist, misogynist, xenophobic and nativist.” \u00a0This is just another way of saying that from the left’s point of view, ordinary Americans should have no say, and no political or cultural existence.<\/p>\n In order to remain a cohesive movement, leftism, which has no positive agenda, must continue to ramp up hatred of its opponents. \u00a0It has come to resemble a “pack” motivated by instincts of power rather than a source of civil debate. \u00a0What if the left’s current posture of intolerance is only the beginning? \u00a0What follows once you have labeled your opponents “deplorable”?<\/p>\n What follows is the urge to crush them, a primitive impulse that Canetti discussed at length in a remarkable section of\u00a0Crowds and Power<\/em>\u00a0entitled “Seizing and Incorporation.” \u00a0Speaking of the instinct to crush one’s opponents, Canetti notes that “it is contempt which urges [an attacker] on to crush [his prey]. … You mean nothing to me[.] … You mean nothing to anyone. You can be destroyed with impunity with anyone noticing” (205). \u00a0That, in essence, is what we are facing.<\/p>\n And that is why the hostility toward Trump will never lessen. \u00a0Assuming that Trump is re-elected in 2020, we are in for eight years of rhetorical warfare. \u00a0The left’s contempt for ordinary Americans is now the basis of its own political survival. \u00a0We’re going to see more “deplorables” speeches, only this time more extreme. \u00a0(Within hours of Anthony Scaramucci’s appointment as White House communications director,\u00a0Mother Jones<\/em>\u00a0headlined<\/a>\u00a0that he “may have a Russia problem of his own.” \u00a0More to come, I’m sure.)<\/p>\n The left continues trying to sink Trump with Russia and other pretexts. \u00a0Why not say what you mean? \u00a0“WAR IS PEACE.\u00a0 FREEDOM IS SLAVERY.\u00a0 IGNORANCE IS STRENGTH.” \u00a0Anything to keep the proles in their place.<\/p>\n