Source: The Federalist
America has been torched by the left’s scorched-earth strategy to defeat Donald Trump. While Trump was still in office, the price was already high. With Trump gone, we are learning that high price was just a down payment.
Today, America is paying in full in its cities, in its schools, on its southern border, and abroad. Seemingly behind every shameful headline is a leftist lowlight.
America’s cities are enduring exploding violence to an extent even the left cannot ignore, but only hope to rationalize. With the left’s pursuit of critical race theory, America’s classrooms are becoming mass indoctrination camps. America’s porous southern border offers chaos reminiscent of a failed Third World state. Even abroad, the left viscerally opposes successful foreign policies, such as the fall 2020 Middle East peace deals and stiff sanctions against terrorist Iran, strictly because they see them tainted by Trump.
Initially, the left did not hate Trump. Instead, they loved him for the havoc he created in Republicans’ field. Once he won the nomination, they laughed because they believed this guaranteed Hillary Clinton’s election.
Only after the left recovered from the shock of Trump’s upset did they start to loathe him. They quickly realized the threat Trump posed. He had not just embraced conservatism to win — once elected, he pursued it beyond their worst nightmares. Most threatening of all, Trump’s conservative populism attracted working-class Americans the left claimed.
The left’s response to their realization was a scorched-earth policy to destroy Trump. Five years into their implacable opposition, we now see the earth the left scorched was America.
Establishment media abandoned any pretext of journalism. They went from being politically biased to being political participants.
As the pandemic unfolded, the left continuously blamed Trump. Despite “the experts’” contradictory admonitions, the left continuously lauded them and condemned Trump.
When states responded with lockdowns, they could not be severe enough to suit the left. Blue states led the way to recession. In the process, their leaders were lauded as paragons of pandemic patriotism, none more than the then thoroughly dishonest, and now thoroughly discredited, Gov. Andrew Cuomo of New York.
Then came the left’s cry to defund the police. The left insisted America was inherently racist, police enforced it, and Trump embodied it. The left led protests nationwide, especially in blue strongholds. The left insisted that opposing the resulting lawlessness was racist. Despite riots taking place under their incitement and in their enclaves, the left claimed they were Trump’s fault.
The left did not see evidence of Trump’s injustice just within America’s borders, they saw it at the border too. There was a “crisis” there because people trying to enter the country illegally were being blocked. The left’s solution was to abolish Immigration and Customs Enforcement; their logic: Without enforcement, there would be no “crisis.”
In the end, the left’s all-out war won; Trump lost. Yet the left’s campaign did not end. If anything, it has burned hotter since Trump’s defeat.
The establishment media now appear to be a permanent political participant. The left is only grudgingly letting go of COVID-19 restrictions, and their overly onerous and arbitrary nature — let alone any questions about their efficacy — are ignored. Cuomo remains in office despite innumerable scandals the left would vilify any conservative for.
Defund the police’s imbecility is reaping obvious rewards. Although the left continues to mouth platitudes of protest, urban America’s sacrifice to lawlessness is plain to see. Even CNN was forced to note the obvious: “The U.S. saw significant crime rise across major cities in 2020. And it’s not letting up.” Of the top 26 largest U.S. cities, only two have Republican mayors.
The left’s myopia that sees race everywhere is fully flowering in classrooms. America’s schools are replacing the “three R’s” with critical race theory, or CRT, an indoctrination blatant enough to make a Maoist misty-eyed.
The similarities are shockingly similar. Both make the individual secondary to the system that shapes them. CRT is intended to do that shaping. The left insists their perception of American racism can only be expunged by deliberate racism of their imposition.
If for the left, racism exists everywhere, the Mexican border no longer exists at all. If ICE has not been abolished, it has been effectively neutered. The result is an unchecked flood of illegal immigrants and drugs. Yet where the left saw a “crisis” when Trump tried to secure it, they see no crisis in its current chaos.
The examples of the left’s arsonist acts go on and on. Never reluctant to cheer against American successes abroad, the left particularly enjoy doing so if they are linked to Trump.
They also gleefully welcomed the recent Palestine-Israel conflict as evidence that Trump’s Abraham Accords failed — despite Palestine having not been a party to the deal and that Palestine again started the conflict. Similarly, the left had to oppose the sanctions that had been driving Iran, state terrorism sponsor par excellence, to its knees simply because Trump was the one to impose them.
In spite of the pandemic being in full remission, the left is fighting to retain lax election laws they claimed were designed to accommodate COVID-19’s unique circumstances. Rather than being one-time responses, the left wants them for all time, under the guise of social justice.
Likewise, the left still uses the pandemic to justify massive federal spending, even as their enhanced unemployment benefits act as the biggest impediment to getting America back to work. Despite spending almost $2 trillion earlier this year — and on top of last year’s trillions in federal aid — the left demands trillions more. Yet America has the contradictory situation of high unemployment and a record number of job openings.
Of course, none of these extensions of the left’s scorched-earth strategy is surprising. The left’s target was always bigger than Trump. Trump merely gave them a convenient vehicle for personifying the right. With Trump now gone from office, clearly the left’s aim was not about removing him, but about removing from American politics the conservatives he represented. The reason? Their eternal quest for unchecked power.
