The Blind Leading The Blind - The Blinkers Of True Belief And The Shock And Awe Of Donald Trump

Bob Muzelle was a true believer, heart and soul, mind and body, a man committed to reforming the world and making it peaceful, verdant, compassionate place. 

Over the years, the decades, and despite his passion, energy, and devotion Bob had seen no progress whatsoever.  The same entitled elitism, greed, insensitivity, and unconcern for the disadvantaged that had always been a hallmark of America was worse than ever, and the country hadn't moved an inch towards a better, more spiritually rewarding world. 

Now that Donald Trump was once again in office and fulfilling his promise to return America to the barbarity of the Robber Barons, the savagery of the Wild West, and the Biblical ignorance of swamp rats, Bob was at loose ends, a discombobulated, disassembled progressive whose rug had been pulled out from under him. 

It wasn't supposed to happen this way.  Once progressivism had taken root and had been nurtured by a sympathetic, eager, and evangelical crowd, there would be no stopping it.  No obstacle, no roadblock, no protest would ever slow its advance.  It was the true political faith, the one and only philosophy of governance, the absolute defining character of human society. 

So one can only imagine Bob's shock, awe, and depression at the first weeks of the Trump presidency, when the man fired off one executive order after another, upending years of careful seeding and husbandry, destroying the very foundations of a compassionate, caring state.  

Matters were made infinitely worse thanks to the unearthly savagery of Trump's Rasputin, the Devil himself, Beelzebub, Elon Musk who, like Genghis Khan rode through the temples of bureaucracy and destroyed them one by one - the sancta sanctorum of democracy, the institutions of progressive governance, the caretakers of the nation's well-being. 

 

'What hath God wrought', Bob sputtered, recalling the Reverend John Berkeley Higgins who had hollered and thundered at him and his family at the Third Presbyterian Church of Great Neck, singling out sinners, apostates, and spiritual rejectionists who in the Devil's army were defiling God's creation.

Bob had long ago rid himself of Pastor Higgins, God, and Jesus Christ in a mission to create a secular, communitarian nation; but the words of the hoary old goat simply were the only ones appropriate for the times. Unless something were done now, the Trump juggernaut would roll over the land and reduce it to a smoking reach of cinders. 

But what, Bob wondered?  He and his progressive mates had tried everything and Trump was still standing.  No amount of calumny and bile had touched him.  The bugger thrived on it, lapped it up and threw it back at his accusers.  Meanwhile with each court case, each indictment, each article of impeachment the Left threw at their man, his supporters grew more emboldened, more convinced of victory and total political revolution. 

The progressive intellectual war chest was empty, the idea bank left with not a scrap of legitimacy, the whole liberal proposition had been derogated, ridiculed, and dismissed; and Americans were so furious after years of being branded as backcountry retards that nothing Bob or his colleagues could propose was given the time of day.  

They had scraped the bottom of the barrel, had pandered, race-baited, and humiliated loyal Americans to such a degree that they feared being tarred and feathered and run out of Washington on a rail.

Income equality, Bob thought, now that was an idea that must still have currency; but at every mention of sharing the wealth, Bob was met by raucous chorus of jeers, taunts, and ridicule. No longer would the IRS sewer rats come swarming for their money.  Civil rights? That has always had national resonance; but again Bob was nonplussed by the reaction. 

‘Black this, black that', his taunters shouted, black faces every bloody where you look, in every ad, every sitcom; and still the inner city was a sinkhole of dysfunction.

 

Climate change, now there was a cause worth fighting for, and the average American had to be concerned about the melting polar ice caps; but here too Bob heard nothing but taunts, ridicule, and dismissive laughter.  A sham, a confected fairy tale of doom and gloom when the human race had always shown intelligence, ingenuity, insight, and adaptability. 

Myopia, opacity, or just plain blindness? How could these progressive politicians possibly not have seen how their vision of the New America was angrily received in the heartland?  DEI, the gender spectrum, the black man atop the human pyramid, Little Miss Muffet military and foreign policy; millions of gangbangers, Fentanyl, and anchor baby mothers pouring across the border? 

These were sensible ideas to whom, exactly? Patriotic notions where and how? Foundational policy?

Bob might not have been so flummoxed, so disoriented, and so lost if it hadn't been for true belief.  Progressive policy on climate, environment, the black man, gender was not just political but moral.  The world would absolutely and incontrovertibly become as progressives saw it.  There were such things as absolutes. 

So when the wheels started coming off the bus, when the train was shunted into the car barn, and when the whole movement started falling flat on its face, it was not just a political defeat but a moral one.  The Left was right to see this as an existential moment.

So, the Left is now the blind leading the blind - a stumbling, lost lot without a harbor, without moorings, and without direction.  Bob bobbed around, becalmed, rudderless, and without a puff of air stirring. Never before had the country seen so much energy, discipline, and purpose on the one hand; and such wayward orphan political despondency on the other.