Here Come The Tantrums
Donald Trump’s win over Hillary Clinton in 2016 led to an election denial that still runs hot today in Democrat circles. But the left also threw anti-Trump tantrums across the country, many of them long before anyone had voted. Should Republicans unseat the Democratic majorities in the House and Senate in the coming midterms, as is expected, we will again see the childishness and narcissism that drives the Democratic Party.
Who can forget the videos of celebrities as well as the unknowns wailing and shrieking and coming apart at the thought of Trump in the White House? In several instances, the demonstrations against the president-elect on the evening of the 2016 election and after turned violent. These political hissy fits have been a combination of performative art and a childish expression of emotion. Despite the differences, the aim is the same: Extortion.
When a toddler has a conniption, flails about and pounds the floor, he is saying: “Give me what I want or I will make your life miserable.” In the case of frothy political meltdowns, the adult children are saying that if they don’t get their way in elections, they will continue to cry, screech, and hold their breath. And of course the high temperatures are stoked by the Democratic Party-media industrial complex, which has become somewhat indistinguishable from a playroom swarming with spoiled tots.
Even after Trump left office, the deranged venting of spleens remained a staple of the left. When the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, Democrats again looked liked overgrown preschoolers. At the time we pointed out, in an editorial headlined The American Mushroom Cloud, that Democratic Sen. Elizabeth “Warren’s fevered tirade clearly shows we have reached the point that the left has decided that policy will not be made like sausage but through tantrum, intimidation, and riot.”
Sure, it could be worse. There could exist a powerful faction that tried to overturn the results of an election based on a false document, co-opting corrupt federal officials, sowing division, and doing all in its power to poison the nation’s politics.
Wait, that did happen. And we’re not talking about Jan. 6.
That was different, though, because it was done by the right people for the right reasons.
Come the evening of Nov. 8, the rage is going to start anew if it hasn’t already by then begun. The streets, public spaces, and all forms of social media will explode. The lamentations will be like those of the women whose men were crushed by their enemies. We hope it will be different this time, that the losing party and its confederates will respond as adults. We have no confidence that it will.
People are free to behave in this country as they wish as long as their behavior doesn’t infringe on the rights of others. We have a constitutional right to protest. But we are moving backward, not in years or decades but in centuries, when the election losers resort to raw, uncontrolled – and sometimes simulated – emotions to try to force their way. It is not the sign of a mature republic but of a culture that is driven by a narcissism that is trying, but failing, to fill empty lives.
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