The Insane Blundering Of The Left - Missing The Point As A Badge Of Honor

The Inauguration is a few days away, and the Left's wails have been quieted for now.  It's Donald Trump's day and no matter how it sticks in their craw, CNN, MSNBC, and the New York Times have to cover the news. 

Of course they do it ironically for according to them everything that the President-elect has proposed is nonsensical fantasy. Nothing but a cookie jar full of ju-jubes and bon-bons, treacle for the masses.  One by one - reduction of the size of government and eliminating interventionist fol-de-rol, turning back the nonsensical woke agenda, digging for oil, staring down Putin and Xi, reducing taxes and punitive restrictions - key issues are smarmily dismissed. 

 

The Left in America is a flailing, disembodied, two-bit circus of faux idealism, and cannot simply see the future. Here and abroad it is not one of fuzzy communitarianism, brotherly affection for the races of the world, welcoming all comers, and turning normal society into a gender freak show; but one of heady individualism, enterprise, and energy.  

Yet they continue to deny the obvious, toy soldiers marching to a tin drum.  The black man is not the native forest genius they said, transgenderism is not the sexual be-all they claimed, and history - nasty, ugly, and scary - is indelible not expungable.  America is not the world's scourge, home to racists, misogynists, and homophobes; and the planet does not need saving. 

Bob Muzelle, culture warrior and age-old fighter for social justice, simply could not lay down his sword, tilt back in his chaise lounge, and admire the sunset.  This egregious Trump character, this fraud, this mighty blowhard will only be in office for four years, and we will be relentless in our pursuit, he said. We will never give up, never!

But the relentless campaign to maim, deter, and destroy didn't work.  Despite the bitchiness, the smarmy innuendo, and outright ad hominem attacks, the man not only survived, but prospered.  He thrived on the clown show, the antics, and the bile.  The more his attackers piled it on, the more energized and defiant he became; and the more he raged and breathed fire, the more his supporters loved him. 

'We must change our approach', said Bob; but he hadn't  clue as to what that might be.  There were no poison arrows left in the quiver, no more missiles in the silo. If the country still didn't believe that the man was Beelzebub, the spawn of the Devil, and Evil incarnate, what was Bob to do? He was still a raging misogynist, a Bull Connor racist, a Hitler, a Stalin but nobody seemed to notice. 

Policy, advised his inner circle, policy - neglected in the past, but now the time had come for articulated ideas, principles, and programs translating the ethos of inclusivity and diversity into practice; but there too Bob and his minions were flummoxed.  They had already buggered the schools, slam-dunked climate, pushed and shoved black people up and down every corridor of power - and still nothing. 

'The barricades', shouted Bob, fist in the air.  'We will take to the streets', but the days of Black Panther, Black Lives Matter store-busting, totin', and car burning were over.  Who is George Floyd? was the current meme, a white, MAGA, racist ignorance par excellence.  The heady days of sit-ins, protests, and demonstrations were over.  'Get a job', was back in. 

'What's a mother to do?', the tag line from a Fifties breakfast cereal commercial was back in vogue.  The ultimate sigh of despair and hopelessness. 'What indeed?' said LaShonda Evans, head of the DEI Department at Duke, a big, brazen, outsized woman of color who took no prisoners.  She was one tough bitch, a cunt with agency, and Bob turned to her.  

'Whatchoo muthafuckin' ofay white boys doin' about takin' care of business?, she hollered at Bob when he came courting.  She had learned no more and no better than the rest of the shills and claques, colored window dressing white progressives had put here and there to show the flag.  But, reflected Bob, if she was now just flotsam, bits of reject and insignificance, where was the whole racial thing going? Was there any way for a middle ground?

Actually and in private, Bob had some bad thoughts.  Maybe it was time to trade on his whiteness, his New England patrician pedigree, his family history that dated back to the Massachusetts Bay Colony and the plantations of Virginia.  Horribilis dictu!, he muttered, shaking his head to get rid of such damning thoughts; but then again why not?  Wasn't authenticity what the movement was all about? Identity and all that. 

 

For decades he had eschewed any reference to his family's storied past - Puritan and Cavalier leading America and setting the standard for European aristocratic American culture - but now might be time to dust off the family album, frame some of his ancestors, and put them on the walls.  In politics, memories are short, so showing up white and pedigreed even after so many years in the progressive trenches would not be all that out of the ordinary. 

Yet there was note of existential concern in his project.  What were the decades of marches, women's conferences, black solidarity, and environmental lobbying worth if no one paid attention to them anymore as the wheel of political fortuned turned? And if there was no intrinsic value in once cherished causes, then why fuss?  March right in to conservative enclaves, 'I'm white, and I'm proud'. 

While Bob toyed with the idea of dalliance, his colleagues were at sixes and sevens, gobsmacked and incoherent.  They had been summarily and unceremoniously booted out of power and positions of merit and importance, and were left on the curb with no bus in sight. 

LaShonda was uncontrite and unbowed. 'White muthafuckas', she hollered so loud that she could be heard through an open window on K Street; but no one was having her brand of in your face black supremacy, and she had to return to the St. Louis where she had been found by Biden operatives cruising the ghettos to find appropriate black women to ride the progressive DEI wagon.  She had no other credentials other than being black, pulled aboard to look as black as possible, hammer whites, and look scary.  

 

As for the rest of the lot - a hodge-podge of single women wondering where now they would find a man to marry, old social activists who could never get over the heady moments on the Pettis Bridge with Ralph and Martin, and opportunists who thought the progressive ride would lead somewhere up - floundered and flopped around, but found work in hardware stores and restaurants back home. 

The core Left had dispersed.  A few stragglers stayed on - accommodationists, the despondent, the hopeful, and the beggars.  It was a shell of its former self, a cracked and used one, ready for the dustbin, but still intact.  A few rainbow flags still flew in American University Park, and scattered Hate Has No Home Here banners still hung from balconies; but most signs of defeat and the humiliation of a discredited cause were taken down, some tossed, others stored 'just in case'. 

So perhaps progressives will coalesce, something untoward might happen during the Trump years and the Left may rise again, but they are a beaten lot, and four years of a dynamic revolutionary Presidency is sure to send them further into the backwaters. 

Only Bob survived, and at last sighting he was sipping a dry martini at the Yale Club, happy as a clam in his new skin.