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Joseph Goebbels, Hitler’s Minister for Propaganda, once said, if a lie is repeated often enough it becomes truth. The anti-Trump crowd has mastered Goebbels’ advice. We have been told repeatedly, in increasingly shrill voices, that Mr. Trump is incompetent, self-obsessed, destructive, toxic, impulsive, petty, adversarial, ineffective. One U.S. Senator, Elizabeth Warren (D-MA), a woman who lied about her heritage, has urged Congress to remove him by invoking the 25thAmendment. Another, Senator Richard Blumenthal (D-CT), a man who lied about his experience in the Marine Corps in Vietnam, called him “an unindicted co-conspirator,” questioning the legitimacy of his presidency. Two reporters from the Financial Times, in an article on Brazil, compared Mr. Trump to Philippine strongman Rodrigo Duterte, claiming him to be anti-gay, anti-women and anti-Black. So, the question is:given his successes:the 2017 tax bill, reducing regulation, lowering unemployment, returning the capital of Israel to Jerusalem, rendering ISIS less dangerous, bringing North Korea to the table, and getting European nations to up their payments for NATO. What would his achievements have been if he had been thoughtful, constructive and competent?
Increasingly, Democrats rely on hate. Hate needs a menace, as Shelby Steele noted in a recent Wall Street Journalop-ed. What started out by Democrats sixty years ago as a fight against injustice – especially racism and segregation – has morphed into fictional enemies, ones necessary for the Left to obtain and retain power. Like Machiavelli, means, no matter how insidious or dishonest, are justified because of the “noble” end sought. Mr. Steele suggests (optimistically?)that “the source of its angst and hatefulness is its own encroaching obsolescence.” I hope so. The use of personal smears to gain political advantage has become endemic to the Left, making imperative the need for at least one prominent Democrat to stand up, using words like those uttered by Joseph Welch in 1954, in response to Senator Joseph McCarthy (R-WI) attacking Army Secretary Robert T. Stevens: “Have you no sense of decency, sir, at long last?Have you left no sense of decency?” Democrats are not alone in the willful destruction of people’s character, but they have taken the practice to new levels. Character assassination comes directly from the playbook of Joseph Goebbels.
Partisanship grows deeper. Every time Senator Chuck Schumer (D-NY) opens his mouth, the gulf widens. In his farewell address to the nation, George Washington warned against what he called the “…baneful effects of the spirit of party…” rooted in “the strongest passions of the human mind.” But, could he have envisioned the priggish hyperbole of those like Senators Cory Booker (D-NJ) and Kamala Harris (D-NY), as they interviewed Judge Brett Kavanaugh for a seat on the Supreme Court, or the sullying of his character by Senator Diane Feinstein (D-CA) who withheld until the last minute a letter from a woman alleging Judge Kavanaugh assaulted her as a teenager? Could President Washington have predicted the publication of a letter published in The New York Timesby “Anonymous,” disparaging the White House as an out-of-control fraternity house and the President as an impetuous, tempestuous idiot? Could the man who spoke the words, “Of all the dispositions and habits which lead to political prosperity, religion and morality are indispensable supports” have predicted a society where religion is disparaged, morality considered relative and students instructed to find their “own” truths? Could the Father of our Country have envisioned a time when his descendants would create a dystopian world where concepts of dignity and respect have become subordinated to victimization and identity politics? Have we fallen so far that rising again is not possible? Has partisanship made our legislative bodies dysfunctional? Do we no longer elect individuals who can think and act independently of party? Have we reached the end of civilization? I don’t think so, but it is easy to become discouraged.
