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Get Yourselves Together
The progressive Left’s collective freak-out about Donald Trump’s election as the 45th president of the United States is entering the embarrassing stage. An emotional reckoning during the first few days post-election was understandable. The Impossible Thing had happened. People needed to express their rage.
Fine. That’s allowed — even encouraged. Picket Trump Tower if you must. Boo the vice president-elect all you want. It’s a free country. Be forewarned, though: Rage is hard to sustain. After a few days, it begins to distort your thinking. It keeps you up at night — makes you crazy. Rage plus time equals madness. “Do I really hate $1 trillion national infrastructure spending projects?” you might find yourself wondering. “Or do I just hate Trump?”
Trump won. Sixty-one million Americans voted for him, despite — or maybe because of — the Left’s efforts to declare his candidacy out of bounds. It was a confusing defeat for progressives. Something — someone — had to be to blamed.
The search for a scapegoat first settled on the “normalizers” — anyone who didn’t lay down on the tracks in order to stop the Trump train. That included CNN and the rest of the cable news industrial complex who milked Trump’s candidacy for ratings and advertising dollars. It included media figures like Jimmy Fallon and Matt Lauer who allowed Trump to pass through the membrane protecting real journalism from “fake news.” And it included regular Republicans like Speaker Paul Ryan and Senator Mitch McConnell who didn’t bow to calls to condemn or abandon Trump.
Even post-election, apparently, the normalization goes on. This weekend, the New York Times Magazine accused Republican National Committee chairman and soon-to-be White House chief of staff Reince Priebus of being the “normalizer in chief.” He is, they say, making the president-elect seem less a dangerous monster than he actually is.
Sometimes, words enter the political vocabulary of the nation organically: brinkmanship, stagflation, Lewinsky. Other times, they are jammed into our mouths by pundits and members of the professional political class bent on shaping a particular narrative. All year we’ve listened to jargoneers tell us that Trump was being “normalized” by this or that cultural institution.
I’m sorry, when 61 million Americans vote for you, that’s just about as normal as you can be.
The idea that “fake news” swung the election is a comforting thought to the progressive Left. It pairs nicely with that other unchallenged assumption among the urbane, self-satisfied, media elite: that the center of the country is an intellectual black hole where ideas, complexities, and comprehension go to die.
That the Left controls the commanding heights of the culture though its domination of Hollywood, the mainstream media, the government bureaucracy, elementary education, and academia, makes the “fake news” meme all the more embarrassing.
It doesn’t occur to the New York Times that they may have contributed to the erosion of their own legitimacy by running opinion pieces dressed up as news on the front page. They presumed that the American people were such rubes that they would buy their slanted version of reality.
The middle of the country got tired of the lies, the smears, and the constant condescension. So they voted for the man they saw as the only one willing to take the fight to the enemy. They voted for Trump, who is like kryptonite to the mainstream media, robbing them of their superpowers.
And wha tis Superman without the ability to outrun a speeding bullet or leap tall buildings in a single bound? A little bit embarrassing, that’s what he is.
Trump won’t take the oath office for another eight weeks. He has implemented no policy, exercised no power, and forced no issue. It isn’t anything concrete that has caused the Left to freak-out; it’s Trump’s words, his tweets, his rhetoric, and the very thought of him sitting in the Oval Office.
A Trump Presidency, at this stage, is still just an idea. Yet, the Left has surrendered itself to an unbecoming paranoia. “Normalizers repent! Turn your backs on fake news before it’s too late,” they thunder like apocalyptic street preachers. “The end of the world is nigh!”
Embarrassing.
Published in Journalism
“Do I really hate $1 trillion national infrastructure spending projects?” you might find yourself wondering. “Or do I just hate Trump?” … Embarrassing.
Indeed.
Victor Davis Hanson also points out ….
The strangest irony of all? Establishment Republicans who hated Trump sounded a lot like establishment Democrats.
This is the downside of tribalism. When all of politics gets reduced to Us v. Them, a political defeat becomes comprehensive. At least when you stick to policies and issues, you can navigate using reason. When it’s all tribal, the defeat becomes personal and emotional – and therefore devastating.
Another point: post-election, the media is still peddling the Left into a state of denial. Whenever I see a panel of pundits condescendingly expound on the meaning of the transition, and what Trump’s presidency will mean (usually predicting disaster, race war, nuclear winter, etc.), I just scratch my head. These pundits have been debunked, defanged, and shown to be wrong — and yet, they still go on with the same media condescension that they had before the election. How David Gergen sleeps at night, I don’t understand. (Then again, what else can he do?)
Is any of it going to change? No. The Left has followed the definition of Insanity … they keep doing the same things and expect a different result.
I can’t speak for the Democrats this question is aimed at but I do, in fact, hate it. I hated it when the Democrats flushed a trillion or so dollars down the drain in pork barrel projects under Barack Obama’s stimulus plan. I don’t find the concept any less hateful now that it will be done by Republicans.
I like the kryptonite line – my favorite. I learned a couple things over the election that are seriously disturbing:
You lost me at “entering.” ;)
Actually their over reaction, makes me look back and realize I overeacted to Obama and everything he did. And makes me embarrassed for the way I was.
It is pretty clear to me now that checks and balances worked pretty well. Most of what Obama did can be undone because the Congress held the line and stopped him from permanent damage, for that I am grateful.
In the dark days at the beginning of the Obama administration, I wanted to be happy for those who were so happy at the first black President, but I kept remembering the rumours about communism and stuff. Then they hired Van Jones, who had to go to CNN… and it just all seemed so dire! I remember we were thinking he wouldn’t go at the end of his terms.
Obama seems to be going, and his legacy is going to be swiftly undermined, and history is going to have to tell some truth about him not being able to govern.
Actually the worst of what Obama did (and Hillary) is in other countries. Which is sad, but didn’t hurt me much. And we are going to do our best to fix ACA.
If I could get through their grief and horriblizing. I would reassure them that the checks and balances will keep Trump from doing the worst of what they are worried about… the Constitution will still protect their basic rights, we aren’t going back to slavery, I promise.
@sash
Your comment has me worried because I was thinking that the Trump administration would be good for these leftists. When the world doesn’t end they will learn that even the worst Republican of their nightmares don’t have as much power as they think they do, and that their fellow citizens aren’t as evil as they think. I was hoping this might ease, but given how the amnity against Obama continued on the right throughout his presidency I don’t hold out much hope that the left does any better.
However I do understand your hindsight. I know a lot of people that thought Obama was going to confiscate their guns, their IRA retirement funds, and their freedom of religion. No matter how much Obama may have wanted to do these things, politically they were out of bounds and when Obama attempted to move toward some of these things he was rebuffed by our system of checks and balances.
The longer they keep up the temper tantrum the more Americans they alienate.
The Democrats have a plan to move from political control of 20% of the US to 10% of the US in 2018.
I was just talking about this with a co-worker. I said it’s fine with me if the Democrats think the only reason anyone votes for Republicans is because of racism/sexism/homophobia/islamaphobia/whatever. If they don’t know why people vote, they aren’t going to get those voters in the future.
Calling people names is a great strategy moving forward…
I’d say it depends on what it is it does. For example, I’ve seen it suggested in multiple places that our power grid needs to be hardened against potential EMP attacks; if it were necessary to use federal funds to do the job I don’t think I’d have a problem with it.
I don’t expect what does happen to be anything that useful, but the possibility does exist.