“The Ugliness of Politics – Is It Necessary?” Sydney Williams
Democrats, who have failed on so many fronts in the first eleven months of the Biden Administration – immigration, inflation, COVID-19, crime, Afghanistan, China and Russia – have resurrected their nemesis Donald Trump, as a foil to promote their claim that the Republican Party “has,” in the words of Dan Kennedy of Northeastern University, “embraced authoritarianism and voter suppression” – a red herring to deflect attention from Democrats’ efforts for self-empowerment. Trump is demonized because, more than anyone, he is seen as standing athwart the federal regulatory Leviathan progressives have erected.
There is something bizarre about supposedly intelligent and well-informed columnists like Dana Milbank of The Washington Post and Jason Linkins of The New Republic, when they claim threats to democracy emanate from the Party that embraces limited government, free markets, deregulation and low taxes, rather than from the Party that supports greater regulation, higher taxes, packing the Supreme Court, nationalizing voting and (in New York City) allowing non-citizens to vote, while urging conformity, and censoring conservative speech on college campuses. The lead essay in the January 2022 issue of The Spectator concludes: “The transformation of free societies by bureaucratic stealth, corporatization, and end-of-world doom-mongering pose greater dangers to America democracy than do China or climate change.” Yet Barton Gellman of The Atlantic, in contradiction to common sense, calls Democrats “protectors of democracy.”
Partisan progressive reporters have made the ludicrous charge that current media coverage of Mr. Biden is more negative than it was of Mr. Trump in his last year in office, an allegation my youngest grandchild would recognize as absurd. The accusation is a Trojan Horse to camouflage their own biases, displayed for four years in the discredited Russian collusion story, and now in a transformation of last January 6, from a protest that got out of hand into an alleged insurrection. Political criticism should be welcomed. But in this new world, criticism of Republicans is encouraged, while criticism of Democrats is treasonous. Jason Linkins headlined an article in The New Republic: “Is Criticizing Joe Biden a Danger to Democracy?” While he did admit that “blind fealty” is a hallmark of dictatorships (which it is), he overrode that admonition when he wrote: “…the GOP is the enemy of democracy, full stop…” Trump is an easy target. He speaks Brooklynese; he is an overweight, incurable narcissist, who speaks without thinking. Republicans have supporters in the media who are unfair in their treatment of Democrats, but the situation is David versus Goliath-like, with progressives controlling most of mainstream media, big tech companies, Wall Street, schools, universities, government bureaucracies, cultural institutions and professional sports.
The arrogance of political elites toward those with differing opinions is mind-numbing. That White House press secretary Jen Psaki belittles those who ask tough questions is legion. Recently, she called Senator Joe Manchin a liar when he said “no” to the Build Back Better legislation. If Ms. Psaki had read The Wall Street Journal, National Review, The New York Sun or The New York Post over the past few months, she would have seen that Senator Manchin’s reservations regarding the legislation were well aired. In the preface to his unfinished book (published posthumously in 1856), The Old Regime and the French Revolution, Alexis de Tocqueville wrote: “…a man’s admiration of absolute government is proportionate to the contempt he feels for those around him.” That is what we are seeing among the progressive branch of Democrats.
Trump can be personally insulting, but he is not condescending. But we did see condescension in the words of Barack Obama when, in 2008, he spoke at a fund raiser in San Francisco about working class voters in an industrialized Pennsylvania town: “They get bitter, they cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren’t like them, or anti-immigrant sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations.” And we saw it in 2016, when Hillary Clinton lashed out at Donald Trump’s supporters, as a “basket of deplorables.” We see that condescension in Nancy Pelosi’s and Chuck Schumer’s briefings We see it in the treatment of COVID-19. We are told to “follow the science,” with no admission that science evolves. The Great Barrington Declaration (GBD) – authored by Dr. Martin Kulldorff of Harvard, Dr. Sunetra Gupta of Oxford and Stanford’s Dr. Jay Bhattacharya, and which focused on protection of the most vulnerable while encouraging the non-vulnerable to resume life as normal – expressed “grave concerns about the damaging physical and mental health impacts of the prevailing Covid-19 policies.” The document, which was signed by 60,000 infectious disease epidemiologists and public health scientists, was ridiculed as “fringe” by Dr. Francis Collins, director of the National Institute of Health (NIH) and called “nonsense and dangerous” by Dr. Anthony Fauci. (Dr. Collins later resigned as director of the NIH after government documents suggested he lied to Congress when he claimed his agency did not fund gain-of-function research at the Wuhan Lab.)
Progressives who dominate the Democrat Party – more through fear than numbers – distort our past and forecast a dystopian future. The Founders, they tell us, were old white men who founded a nation based on oppression and slavery. They argue that 156 years after the end of the Civil War, a war fought to end slavery, we remain a “systemically racist” nation. We are, they claim, a nation comprised of victims and victimizers. As for our future, without adoption of their statist agendas and policies, racial tensions will increase, gender discrimination will persist, and man-caused climate change will bring an end to our world. A salad bowl has replaced the mixing bowl, as a metaphor for the American experience. Ignoring the economic consequences, Cassandras argue the world needs fewer not more people, and that capitalism creates economic unfairness. Yet, according to an NBC poll, cited by Frank Bruni in The New York Times in November, 71% of Americans feel the country is on the wrong track, a sense of pessimism reflected in Census Bureau numbers that showed the U.S.’s population gain in 2020 was the lowest increase on record.
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What is wanted in this fractious political environment, where sanctimonious politicians belittle opponents and politicize issues like infectious diseases and climate change, is an injection of common sense, leavened with the good feelings and optimism of a President Reagan, who spoke of a bright future, a “shining city on a hill.” The reality is that the United States is a good nation with a diversity of free people, who have been infused by progressives with self-hatred and self-doubt. In truth, we are a mixing bowl, not a salad bowl. In 2015, 17% of marriages were interracial, up from 3% in 1967. In that same year, 39% of U.S.-born Hispanic and 46% of U.S.-born Asian marriages were between spouses of different races and ethnicities. In 1960, about 5% of U.S. women had a college degree. In 2020, that number was 38.3 percent. In 1992, among working blacks, 15.9% held a bachelor’s degree. By 2018, that number had increased to 31.2 percent. The U.S. has never claimed to be perfect, but its attractions and promises make it the most sought-after nation in the world for immigrants. We can achieve an era of good feelings. But our republic, based on ancient Western ideals, cannot be left to professionals. It requires the participation of the people.
In the December 27, 2021 issue of National Review, Peter Wood wrote: “The West, in its ideals, is a universal culture open to all, but always on the condition that those who hope to enter it recognize its unceasing demand to reach for those ideals that promise unity…” Political ugliness doesn’t have to prevail. We can, and we should, be optimistic for the future. But it requires study, confidence, effort and wisdom.
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