by Bill Thomas
How much crazier can the progressive Left get? The short answer is a lot.
After their victory in the midterms, Democrats can assume the two-year psychodrama they inflicted upon the nation actually worked. So why stop.
Hillary Clinton’s been saying that “civility can start again” when her party regains both the House and Senate. Since that’s not going to happen for at least another election cycle, it’s a matter of public safety to wonder what the next level of crazy might be.
With President Donald Trump still in office it doesn’t take a genius to predict that the other side’s removal effort is about to shift into high gear.
Democratic strategy usually calls for mau-mauing political opponents with insults and agitation. But what happens this time around if things get out of hand?
Suppose the anti-Trump resistance redoubles its investment in the deranged and turns into something like the Weather Underground. For those who may have missed the late 1960s, that was the group led by Bill Ayers, best remembered for setting off bombs in the Pentagon and U.S. Capitol Building.
After finally surrendering to authorities, Ayers later in life was the domestic terrorist said to be “paling around” with Barack Obama when the two worked together on a project to radicalize Chicago school kids.
Here it should be noted there’s a big difference between today’s spoiled resisters and their predecessors. Not only do current crazies enjoy the support of high-level Democrats, like Obama, encouraging them to “punish our enemies.” They also have the entire mainstream media behind them, eager to blame whatever they do on Trump.
The Weather Underground, Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) and other violence-prone militants of old never got anyone’s official approval, and they never freelanced as a Democratic Party goon squad. Their goal was a Marxist-style overthrow of the government.
The SDS mission statement for Days of Rage, a nationwide anti-Vietnam War protest-turned-riot in 1969, got right to the point: “The Elections Don’t Mean Shit—Vote Where the Power Is—Our Power Is In The Street.”
Back in the day, taking it to the street almost guaranteed bloodshed. The rage in Chicago that year ended after less than an hour with 28 police injured, six members of the Weather Underground shot (none fatally), and 68 demonstrators arrested.
Times, obviously, have changed. Antifa, Black Lives Matter (BLM) and similar social justice warriors are seen by progressives as doing what needs to be done, no matter how much harm they cause. As seen recently when an Antifa mob attempted to storm Tucker Carlson’s home.
In 2016, BLM leaders were invited to the White House for a pep talk from the radical-in-chief. “They are much better organizers than I was when I was their age,” President Obama said. “I’m confident that they are going to take America to new heights.”
A year later an FBI investigation concluded that a major cause for an increase in shooting attacks on law enforcement officers was revenge inspired by the Black Lives Matter movement.
Fifty years ago, when protesting became widely popular, the political establishment was conservative and protesters were in the vanguard of the liberal counterculture.
As things heated up, even The New York Review of Books, the literary house organ of the intellectual Left, got involved. In August 1967 it published a front-page picture of a Molotov cocktail along with step-by-step instructions on how to make one.
Interesting how lefties hate guns but don’t mind explosives.
Besieged by the civil rights movement, peace marches, and the sexual revolution, all at the same time, the conservative establishment didn’t have a prayer.
Soon liberalism became the governing principle in Washington. Barack Obama’s election was thought to be the dawn of a bright progressive future. One problem: since then the Left has been in a slow and steady decline.
The political establishment is still liberal. Only now the advancing counterculture, improbably led by Donald Trump, is conservative—or at least normal.
Which is why resisters defend Democrats, their rallying cry a bogus claim that the Kremlin helped Trump steal the 2016 election. The New York Times has already reported it’s found evidence that Russians meddled in the midterms. They probably let a couple of democratic socialists get by just to cover their tracks.
Is the current generation of left-wing activists ready for a full-scale 1960s-type offensive against the president, not to mention the reaction that’s likely to follow?
Everyone saw how quickly police caught the guy accused of mailing fake pipe bombs. With Trump in the White House and a growing law-and-order mood in the country, imagine the response if real bombs start going off.
They may be crazy enough to try it, but how many pampered progressives are prepared to do the time, or worse, for the likes of Chuck Schumer and Nancy Pelosi?
We may soon find out.
– – –
Bill Thomas is the author of Capital Confidential: A Century of Scandals, Secrets, and Lies in Washington and other books. He is also a former editor with the Economist Group, a leading source of analysis on international business and world affairs.
Photo “Not My President” by Fibonacci Blue.
