As the once-unthinkable reality of a Donald Trump presidency reaches the two-hundred-day mark, the left, now self-identifying as “the resistance,” has offered up no viable ideas, alternatives, or solutions. They have carried on as if the election was a gigantic mistake – a figment of the American imagination and a preposterous aberration which can somehow be reversed. Since their personal night of long knives, every ounce of leftist energy has gone to the single goal of removing America’s 45th President by any means they can find or concoct (Russia will do just fine).
Their brains are so addled by hatred for Trump that they seem not to care about the political consequences of having no agenda beyond opposing Trump – unless you call the Democrats’ “better deal” anything more than a warmed-over restatement of the same progressive principles rejected by voters in 2016. The left’s singular campaign message that Trump represents an existential threat to the country and the world was a miscalculation of historic proportions, and yet since the election they persist – at their own peril – with the same strategy.
But there is a much larger issue in question: What is at the heart of the leftist mind? It’s difficult to refrain from snarking here but we will forge ahead anyway.
Last week’s events might well contain the answer. The left’s defense and embrace of sanctuary cities and their rejection of the RAISE act to reform our legal immigration system reveal a disturbing level of self-hatred. In both cases, leftists call for the surrender of the very culture in which they have lived, and in many cases, thrived. They renounce their heritage when they not only permit but embrace all who want to enter the country – legally or illegally – regardless of their background, skills or intentions. They excuse and side with “undocumented” immigrants who have broken the law instead of Americans who uphold it. The fact of at least eleven million people living illegally in our midst is, in the leftist mind, cause for celebration.
Why does the left renounce the very constitutional principles which have defined America from its inception? Why do they defend and celebrate those who flout the law? Why do leftists seem to hate their own country, and by extension, themselves?
Barack Obama certainly provided the basis, or permission, for their full-throated self-loathing. After all, the “fundamental transformation of America” promised by the 44th President in the waning days of the 2008 presidential campaign was shockingly bold. His message was clear: the America we knew from 1776 to 2008 deserved to be toppled and supplanted by an ever-growing administrative nanny state determined to punish the productive and reward the unproductive. How ironic it is that under the Obama administration, the rich got richer and the poor got even poorer.
White guilt, itself a product of the left’s relentless, foundational message that American greatness was illegitimate, played a part in the election and reelection of Obama. Guilt-ridden Caucasians liked and voted for the man himself, but not so much for his foundational message. His idea that the blood, sweat, and tears of the exploited classes (the 99%) were lining the pockets of the corrupt oligarchs (the 1%) –a situation which could only be rectified with more intervention by the federal government – was ignored entirely by those who feared the racist label. And as the last election proved, the voters were so fed up with Obama’s leftist worldview that they were willing to roll the dice on the riskiest, most bombastic and unconventional president in American history. Obama was the first president who seemed to believe that America was on the wrong side of history, and people finally tired of feeling ashamed of their heritage.
Nevertheless, as the left’s Alinsky-like assault on Trump continues unabated, Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel defends his sanctuary city by filing a lawsuit against the Trump administration for withholding federal funds. Of course, given that the $3.2 million in question represents a minuscule portion of Chicago’s $100 million plus annual law enforcement budget, Emanuel decided the political advantage of strutting his anti-Trump bona fides for the benefit of his Hispanic support base was far more valuable than the money. And Emanuel says he expects many other cities (run by leftists) to follow his lead. Not very constructive, is it?
But while the left’s proud defiance of the federal law is apparent in their stand on sanctuary cities, their self-loathing is unmasked to a similar degree in their withering criticism of the RAISE act – exemplified by the grandstanding of CNN’s Jim Acosta at a White House press briefing. The Trump administration describes the merit-based system as one which “rewards education, English-language ability, high-paying job offers, past achievements, and entrepreneurial initiative.”
And the problem with that is? Would we prefer to admit immigrants who don’t speak our native language, have no job prospects and have achieved nothing? How exactly does that benefit our culture and workplace? How does it behoove indigent or desperate immigrants if they enter the country and have little or no hope of a decent life beyond the welfare state into which the left is anxious to pour almost unlimited resources? Is it wrong for us to evaluate whether potential immigrants have a love for this country? Following leftist reasoning, it is apparently better if they don’t.
It’s not as if we have no idea what will happen if we give in to the left’s open invitation for anyone and everyone to enter the country. We can see the impact right before our eyes in Europe. In a decision likely to resound down through the ages, German Chancellor Angela Merkel admitted more than two million people, mostly Muslims, into her country in 2015 alone. By virtue of the open border policy within the European Union, these migrants can travel freely through the entirety of the EU. From London to Paris to Brussels to Stockholm and beyond, terrorism has risen exponentially and the culture has transformed in just the way the American left desires. Indeed, the results have been nothing short of disastrous. And yet, in the face of it all, Merkel may well double down to “stabilize” her country’s population. And the left cheers her on.
The logic is breathtaking, but it’s also quite informative. They are ashamed to be white. They are ashamed to be American. They are ashamed of our Constitution. And so, the self-loathing left seeks to kill the goose which has, for 241 years, laid their golden eggs. As the president might say, SAD!
