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Despite the harmonious influence of Valentine’s Day, hate filled the days of February, as they have for the two years of Mr. Trump’s Presidency. “Fear of something is at the root of hate for others, and hate will eventually destroy the hater,” wrote George Washington Carver, a thought we should all consider. President Trump is the focus of hate among smug elites whose sense of superior self-righteousness governs their behavior. Mr. Trump embodies all that coastal elites love to hate: He is white and male. He is not politically correct. He is coarse. His accent does not conform to an ivy league education. His words come out jumbled, even when using a teleprompter. In speech, he is in sharp contrast to the mellifluous tones of his predecessor. His orange hair, blue suits and red “power” ties compare poorly to the easy casualness of Mr. Obama. Not trained in politics nor encumbered with graciousness, Mr. Trump says what’s on his mind. He does not hide behind a veil of diplomacy or hew to pre-programmed messaging. All this is in contrast to politicians who say what is expected and who live in a world where style supersedes substance.
It was a month that offered clear distinctions for what voters might expect in November 2020. Mr. Trump is portrayed as being of the far-right, whereas his policies have been centrist: the economy is doing well, no wars have broken out overseas and his poll numbers have risen, though modestly. On the other side, Democrats have moved sharply to the left, with even former centrists like Senators Kirsten Gillibrand and Cory Booker, following, pied-piper like, the siren call of socialism expressed by Representative Anastasia Ocasio-Cortez, with her Green New Deal, and by Bernie Sanders, with his call for free public college and Medicare for all. And both, for their demagoguery of everything Trump. One is reminded of C.S. Lewis, whose posthumously published book God in the Dock: Essays on Theology included the lines: “Of all the tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive…those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end, for they do so with the approval of their own conscience.” Think of Marx, Engels, Lenin and Mao.
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It is C.S. Lewis’ quote that leads me to believe that the most significant news in the month was not the silly Green New Deal; it was not the passing of the budget and the avoidance of another government shut-down, nor the subsequent exercise of emergency powers to fund a barricade along the U.S.-Mexico border; it was not progress on the China-U.S. trade deal, nor the sit-down in Hanoi between President Trump and North Korean Supreme Leader Kim Jong-un. It was not the withdrawal by the U.S. from the Nuclear Missile Treaty that Russia had already violated; nor was it the childish, ill-tempered behavior of the EU’s leadership towards Britain’s democratically-determined decision to leave the EU. It was not rising tensions in Kashmir. No. The most important news item of the month was the revelation that a small cabal of unelected senior law enforcement officials in Washington plotted to take the law into their own hands, to plan the removal of a duly elected President of the United States – a traitorous and unprecedented action.
