I live in an apartment complex in Queens County, New York City. It is deep in the heart of “the resistance” to President Donald Trump, a man I was no more tempted to vote for in 2016 than his ridiculous opponent on the left, Hillary Clinton.
Yet today here, and in most of New York and throughout most of the states that voted Democratic in the last presidential sweepstakes, every conversation with many of the enraged left must begin with some incredible insult of Trump; the bigger the better.
Indeed, if your disparagements of Trump aren’t verging on, or exceeding, the rabid, you are thought to be some kind of brainless yahoo at best, or perhaps a racist who secretly worships a picture of the Der Fuhrer.
The Resistance Strikes Out at the Neutrals
For these outraged Trump haters, who have never accepted the results of the 2016 election, there are no apolitical innocents. There are no Switzerlands or Costa Ricas. Everyone has to choose a side—their side. And for the self-anointed defenders of all that is good and true, there is no third or fourth way. There is only their way, which apparently has a monopoly on truth and everything that is good, or ever will be good.
Let us consider mi mujer, the ever-comely Suzanne Hall. She is not an overtly political person. I would describe her as somewhat centrist, sometimes leaning a little to the right; other times to the left. Her great concern is that a president be pro-environment.
However, interestingly, as a woman who experienced a fair amount of workplace discrimination in the male dominated field of airplane maintenance, she had not the least temptation to vote for the first woman to win a major party’s presidential nomination.
Why?
Women Who Dissented
She didn’t vote for Hillary Clinton, who she viewed as a self-serving opportunist, a mountebank, much like her husband, Bill Clinton. By the way, elsewhere I have written about how she and millions of American women didn’t vote for Clinton in the expected numbers:
Their hostility, in effect, decided the election. They either didn’t vote at all or some actually voted for Trump. They have been overlooked by those trying figure out why Trump pulled a Harry Truman 1948 upset in 2016.
However, there is a sea of difference between Hillary Clinton and her husband. William Jefferson Clinton’s opportunism traditionally has played out in a much more delightful way. He reminds me of a Flashman or a Felix Krull, Confidence Man. Sure, they’re rogues, but delightful ones who entertain us even as they picked our pockets.
Mixed Feelings
Suzanne has mixed feelings about El Donaldo. She agrees with some of his policies and feels the extreme left absurdly dogs him. She refuses to turn him into a mad dog frothing at the mouth when his name comes up. She sometimes asks friends to please keep the conversations apolitical.
But, in many places here in New York, that just isn’t possible. The mentality of “the Resistance” is simple. Trump “stole” the election, which is risible. In fact, Trump won in part because he played the populist card much more effectively than his opponents on the left.
Therefore, his leftist opponents say he should be impeached and removed from office. That’s even though the recent Mueller Report confirms that Trump, often guilty of being intellectually inconsistent and sometimes magnificently mushaggah, has committed no impeachable crimes.
Mainstream Messes
Indeed, with apologies to the often-pathetic mainstream media, no one has proven that Trump is being blackmailed by the Russians even though the charge has been repeatedly made. Richard Engel of NBC News made this charge during the blubbering coverage on election night 2016. Pace Engel, unlike most of his colleagues who seemed on the verge of tears, Engel seemed to be doing his best Ernest Hemmingway “who wants to fight,” imitation.
Still, at the risk of getting socked by the outraged Engel, I pose this question: Is there one bit of evidence proving Trump’s getting blackmailed by the Kremlin? By the way, any news organization that could prove this would win a Pulitzer. How about it, NBC News, don’t you want the big prize?
But for the get Trump crazies that doesn’t matter. Nothing matters to these fanatics except one thing: Topple Trump. By the way, does it make sense from a political viewpoint?
Je pense que non.
If you were to successfully impeach Trump, Mike Pence would become president. He is very conservative, much more right wing than Trump, whose philosophy, if he has one, seems to change with each twitter message.
So Pence is who the enraged left wants as our next president? Really? This would be a classic case of be careful what you wish for, you might get it.
Join Us or Else!
The enraged Left may not say it this way but this is the essence of their inflamed thinking: You’re either with us or against us. It is a kind of thinking that reminds me of the often-disastrous foreign policy of President George W. Bush. He, along with his revered father, gave this country superfluous, tragic wars. The disastrous results still haunt us to this day as does the tragedy of the Vietnam War and other wars that many Americans have forgotten or never learned about since history has gone out of fashion in a nation of mobile device zombies.
Not everyone on the left, or on the right, is insane. But the stupid left and the stupid right actually have a lot more in common than they admit. They both seek to crush independent thought. They cannot tolerate someone who criticizes most major parties, which do their best to hog power.
So far here in Queens and in many other places across los Estados Unidos, the “reign of you must be with us or else” seems, on the surface, to be succeeding if one goes by mainstream media.
Time for independent men and women to collectively say, “basta ya!”
